


Soup for the Soul

by counterheist



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Human, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Gen, Slice of Life, romano is his own mom
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-06-10
Updated: 2011-11-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 03:57:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 26,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9054439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/counterheist/pseuds/counterheist
Summary: Slice of life. Columnist Antonio Fernandez doesn't need renters to fill his house, but he might need them to fill his heart. Through an ad in the paper he meets single mother Lovina Vargas and her bratty son Romano, and learns that you don't need to be related to be family. Yes, I broke the universe and put S. Italy in there twice.





	1. Begin with the Beginning of the End

_Good Morning! Good Afternoon! Goodnight!_  
  


Did you remember to say these things to the people around you today? You should try it sometime; it can really make a difference! Just a small greeting, a small moment of your own time can turn another person’s day around. Just two simple words can show someone that you’re thinking of them. You really should try it!  
  
Lately, I’ve had so many things to write about, because everyone's really great with sending me tips and suggestions. Our world really is the best! But instead of using any of those stories today, I’d like to share something that happened to me. I was sitting in the park last week, trying to write my piece for today, when I saw the cutest thing; a little girl had found a dollar on the sidewalk!  
  
Has that ever happened to you? I have terrible luck; I don’t think I’ve found spare change on the side of the road since I was little. But isn’t it a great feeling, finding something unexpected like that? Small surprises happen more often in life than people think; take them as opportunities to feel a little bit brighter!  
  
Back to the park. I’ll admit that I might have been feeding the ducks a little bit more than working on my column (don’t tell my editor!), so I was a bit distracted. Do you know what happened next? That little girl walked over to me and gave me the dollar she had found! It was such a surprising thing, because haven’t we all grown up with ‘finders keepers’? But maybe we should rethink that old saying. Because for all the bubble gum or cool trinkets that little girl could have bought with the lucky dollar she'd found, she looked even happier to share it with me.  
  
And then she told me about a homeless shelter a few blocks away… Maybe I should clean up a little more before I go outside…?  
  
That’s it for this week’s cheer-up charm! Like always, if you have an inspiring story to share, a topic you’d like me to address next week, or any other suggestions, just send an email directly to me at cheerupcharms@nationalnews.com! I love hearing from everybody!  
 

And remember:  
Have a wonderful day!  
  
---  
  
 

* * *

  
The gala was for… the gala was _for_ … something? Some foundation? Or maybe it was just for one of the papers that ran his column. Yes. Maybe that was it. Antonio Fernandez had been grilled by multiple people before the party had started, about what the gala was for and why he was there and what his speech was going to be about… Oh that was right. His speech. He was supposed to be giving a speech at the gala. That was probably why he was standing to the corner of a stage, letting a smiling man in a tux a little bit sharper than his own introduce him to the crowd. Antonio could see his editor out there, leaning against one of the ballroom’s pillars. He looked very smug, probably because he had gotten Antonio up to the stage and had even gotten him to stay there.

  
Antonio would be the first to admit that he had the tendency to wander off sometimes. There was always something exciting happening in the world; if he wasn’t around it, he couldn’t write about it. And Antonio had made a business writing about exciting and wonderful things.

  
That was probably why the announcer was looking at him expectantly now. If he was done with his introduction, that meant that it was someone else’s job to talk, right? Oh wait. Antonio was giving a speech. _He_ was the one who was supposed to be talking. Oh.  
  
“Mr. Fernandez? Mr. Fernandez? Don’t be shy now…” the announcer sounded kind of nervous. Antonio thought that was a little overkill. He’d just needed a moment to gather his thoughts, that was all.  
  
Antonio Fernandez walked over to the podium at the very front and center of the stage, and tapped on the top of the microphone. “Ah, is this working? It is? Okay. Sorry,” he turned towards the announcer, who hadn’t quite made it off the stage yet. “I wasn’t afraid, I was just thinking!” That garnered some laughs from the audience. But Antonio didn’t see why it was all that funny. People didn’t think enough these days. Thinking was an activity that should be prized above everything else, but most people looked at him like he was crazy when he actually took the time to do it. Especially when he was in the middle of a crosswalk, or paying his bill at a restaurant or in the check-out line of the grocery store. Or when he was standing on a stage, about to give a speech to a room full of his peers.  
  
Everybody lived too fast in Antonio’s opinion. They’d really benefit from taking a few more minutes out of every day to just _think_.  
  
“Thank you for letting me speak to you tonight. It really is an honor. As you’ve heard, my name is Antonio Fernandez Carriedo,” that last bit _technically_ wasn’t part of his name, not legally, but Antonio loved his mother much too much not to acknowledge her in his name. He liked the tradition. He loved his mother; out of all of his relatives, she was the only one who still stayed in touch. “My column, the Weekly Cheer-Up Charm, has been in syndication since 2007…”

* * *

  
“Good job, Antonio. I was afraid for a moment that you’d fallen asleep up there.” His editor had waited for almost an hour before approaching Antonio, after his speech. And in that time, Antonio had had to endure endless chit-chat and questions about his column and where he got his inspiration and who was that boy that he wrote about sometimes and he was single wasn’t he and...  
  
“I can’t fall asleep when I’m standing up, that’s just silly.” But then again… “I _can_ fall asleep with my eyes open, but that’s really more of a skill than anything."  
  
His editor looked as though he wanted to clap Antonio on the back, but a waiter passed the two men by before he could. So instead he took the opportunity to snag two champagne flutes for himself and his very best writer. “You certainly are a character, Fernandez. You know, I was also afraid that you’d forgotten what this whole evening was about.”  
  
Antonio laughed it off. “Why would I do something like that… ah ha ha…” He dearly hoped that his editor would give him some sort of clue as to what the gala was for, because he didn’t have a single one at the moment. Was it something for a charity? He knew he should already know, but the answer was just out of his reach.  
  
“It’s not every day that you get a book deal, now is it? Never going to have to worry about money, that’s for sure. With the way your column sells the papers, I wouldn’t be surprised if you could snag a contract for another book _tonight_. Just work a little of your cheer-up magic onto one of those men over there,” he pointed off into another crowd, “and you’ll never have to worry about _anything_ again.”  
  
Oh. So the party was for _him_. That sort of made sense; Antonio remembered the book deal, now, was surprised that he’d even forgotten. Well, maybe not that surprised. He’d had a lot on his mind lately. In fact… he just wanted to go home. The gala wasn’t as fun as the big work parties usually were for him. Talking to the sharply dressed people around him felt like a chore.  
  
His own suit was constricting, even though _she_ had helped him pick it out, and had even stood close to straighten his bow tie after he'd put it on. Apparently he was “completely pathetic, how did you manage to knot it this badly, you moron.” She’d even stopped him at the door and reminded him to switch his glasses for the newer pair that his editor had made him buy once newspapers had started asking to have his picture to put next to his column ( _Antonio didn't think his old frames were so bad; they'd worked since high school!_ ),  
  
She was probably asleep right now. He’d bet they both were.  
  
“Hello? Earth to Antonio? Have you been listening to me?”  
  
Antonio would rather be at home with Lovi and Roma than here at the sparkling gala with champagne and his editor and his own thoughts and no one else’s. He’d had that feeling a lot lately, although he couldn’t explain it well.  
  
“C’mon Fernandez, I know you’re a great thinker, but now is _not_ the time to go all philosophical on me. Head out of the clouds, man, this is your _livelihood_ at stake."  
  
His editor was really over-dramatic sometimes. Antonio didn’t get it. He already had one book, a weekly column syndicated in newspapers across the country and a lifetime’s inheritance, given by guilty, absent parents. Money was something that Antonio Fernandez Carriedo rarely bothered himself to think about.  
  
He hoped Lovi hadn’t fallen asleep at the table again. She’d looked really tense for the past few days, like she hadn't been sleeping well. But she hadn’t told him what was wrong, which was really like her, come to think. He should have just asked. She might have told him her problems if he’d asked. Maybe.  
  
“Toni! Are you alright?!” His editor was shouting now.  
  
Antonio looked away from the spot of tile he had apparently been scrutinizing, contemplated his champagne, thought about the drive home, pushed the flute into his editor’s free hand and walked away. “I’m going home now. I hope the rest of your evening is nice!” He meant that, and his editor would know that he wasn’t being sarcastic or mean. Even if Antonio didn’t want to be there anymore, that didn’t mean that he didn’t want the other guests to enjoy themselves. Far from it.  
  
He loosened his bow tie as he skipped out of the building, past some less-than-fashionably latecomers and some couples that had had a bit more than their share of the complementary champagne. But that was okay. They wouldn’t miss him, not with the night still so young ( _1:30 already? Wow, where did the time go?_ ), and the party still in full swing. Antonio found his car in the parking lot and fished his keys out of his pocket.  
  
Thirty more minutes and he would be home. Maybe twenty if he went a little faster than he was supposed to… although Lovi would kill him if he got into an accident. She was like that too, threatening to kill him even if he was already dead.  
  
Antonio smiled and decided not to turn the radio on.  
  
His thoughts were enough to keep him company for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. About this story. It is my apology to Spain story. Therefore, things will get very cutesy from here on out (Seriously, with miniRomano how couldn't they?). Plotwise... there won't be much. And the chapters will skip around, timewise.
> 
> Also: The prologue and the epilogue are the same chapter, just split apart because I want you to see all the little in-between things before you read the end. The numbering system for them is inspired by this. It doesn't have anything to do with this story, I just think it's a cool topic (bad pun...). But it's an interesting episode to watch, if you care to.
> 
> Double Also: The column? Hardest thing. I'm not nearly that cheerful in real life. Trying to write like Spain would is tiring. I don't know how it worked out, so if anybody's got suggestions for how Spain would write (So far it's gung ho + super cheerful + optimistic + dense) or what Spain would write, go ahead and push them forward! I don't plan on starting every snippet with a column though, that'd be too much.


	2. New Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alone, without anyone to rely on in a foreign country, Lovina Vargas does whatever she has to to protect her own. This includes moving in with the strangest man she has ever met.

Juggling to keep her phone balanced on one shoulder, she tore the ad out of the newspaper and stuffed it into her purse. “You can’t tell anyone.”   
  
“Lovi, ve,” Feliciano was probably running his free hand through his hair on the other end of the line. He did that when he was agitated. “They won’t be as angry as you think they’ll be.”   
  
“No, it’ll be worse.” They both knew that. She didn’t know why Feliciano was pretending otherwise. “I can’t let them know, so if they find out, I’ll know that _you_ let them know.” And pain would follow.   
  
By now he was probably frowning. “I promise not to… I just wish you would consider moving to Germany with me. I could help–”   
  
“Like fucking hell.”   
  
He sighed. “How did I know you would say that…?”   
  
“Because you’ve asked a thousand times and—,” she set down the phone as quickly as she could, but her worried muttering made it to her brother’s ears anyway. “Oh shit, he’s crying again.” He was always crying. When he wasn’t sleeping, he was crying. She worried now, if she couldn’t hear him when he was awake.   
  
“Lovi?”   
  
He asked it with concern and she remembered all the tea parties and dolls of their younger days. All the baby birds nursed back to health, all the delicious pasta cooked… all done by her brother. It was ridiculous, but sometimes she had the wild idea that her brother would make a better mother. She pushed the thought away as she rocked her son back to sleep. After his tiny breaths became even again, she picked up the phone. “Feli… just send me the money.”   
  
“Okay.” He’d only met his cute nephew once ( _when Romano had been born and the week following_ ), but that was enough for Feliciano. Romano was family too. “And I’ll visit as soon as I can; you know I don’t like leaving you like this.”   
  
“I won’t break.”   
  
“Ve…” Feliciano wished that was true. He could hear Lovina holding back her tears. It made _him_ want to cry. But he had a meeting in the morning, and there was only so much he could do for his big sister from halfway around the world.  
  
And knowing Lovi, she was just about to hang u— “Goodbye.”   
  
_CLICK_  
  


* * *

  
Lovina Vargas looked down at the crumpled piece of paper in her hand.   
  
_For rent: 1bd 1ba, living rm, large space, well lit, kids & pets welcome! $XXX/month w/util!! Inquire at XXX-XXXX!!! :)_   
  
She looked back up at the twisting driveway and the enormous house, only barely visible through the trees of its extensive gardens. Shit. This was a joke, wasn’t it? Some idiot’s idea of good fun, putting an ad in the classifieds, making a city full of poor single mothers pay bus fare that they didn’t have for a wild goose chase looking for a cheap apartment because they were about to be evicted and had nowhere else to go and dammit Lovina was **angry**! Holding on to her anger ( _in order to keep her nervousness at bay_ ), Lovina Vargas held on tightly to her sleeping son and stomped past the garden walls and up the driveway.   
  
The cheerful flowers lining the walk didn’t faze her.   
  
Neither did the shining windows nor the well-polished doorknob. She was going to follow up on the stupid address she had gotten from the stupid man she had talked to after calling the stupid phone number in the stupid ad. In fact, why stop there? The newspaper itself was stupid too; she only picked it up ( _day old, out of recycling bins, naturally_ ) to give Romano something to play with. And maybe because she liked reading the Cheer-up Charms; it felt good to know that someone else had the occasional bad thing happen to him. And his picture wasn’t all that awful either…   
  
Anger cooled, Lovina pressed the doorbell and hoped.   
  
It rang twice.   
  
After a short pause, she could hear the sound of footsteps. And the disgruntled noises of a cranky Romano waking up. Before the door swung open, Lovina fussed with Romano’s blanket and hoped her potential landlord meant it when he said kids were okay ( _on the handful of dates she’d been on since… since, she’d found that Romano was the best test to see if a man_ actually _liked children_ ).   
  
“Hello?”   
  
That face. That face was familiar, although Lovina couldn’t place it. She could easily place his voice as belonging to the man she had talked to over the phone. She could also easily place his smile as one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen and—“You said in the ad that children were welcome?” Smooth, Vargas. Smooth.   
  
He laughed and propped the door open with his foot, beckoning the mother and child inside. “Of course! He’s cute! How old is he?”   
  
The loud, unfamiliar voice was enough to wake Romano up fully.   
  
_WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!_   
  
“Wow,” the landlord tilted his head. “I didn’t know my house had such good acoustics.”   
  
Lovina didn’t want to _die_ of embarrassment, exactly, but she would settle for being knocked out by it. Face red, she tried to get Romano to calm down. “Shushhhhh…” They needed this guy to like them.   
  
“What’s his name?”   
  
_AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!_   
  
Why? “Romano.”   
  
_GYYYAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!_   
  
“May I?” The landlord was smiling and holding out his arms. For a second, Lovina didn’t understand. Then she did. What kind of an idiot was this guy if he thought she was going to surrender her baby to a complete stranger?   
  
“Oh, no, he’s not usually like this. He doesn’t like being awake so early, and—”   
  
The landlord took a step closer and patted Romano on the cheek. “Don’t cry Romano! I promise to make this quick so you can go back to sleep, or my name’s not Antonio Fernandez Carriedo!” He paused as Romano’s wailing grew even louder. “Actually, you sound a little hungry too.” The landlord, Mr. Carriedo, turned his eyes to Lovina. “Is it okay for him to have soup? Tomato? That’s all I have right now.”   
  
Lovina would have told him that it wasn’t necessary, that sometimes Romano just liked to scream, it was a hereditary thing. She never got the chance.   
  
First, Romano stopped screaming. Antonio, assuming he had done something right, smiled down at him ( _‘Cuuute’_ ). And then, faster than it usually did, Romano’s face changed from peach to pink to red. His little cheeks puffed out. And even though Lovina knew what was about to happen, she wasn’t fast enough to push Carriedo out of the way before her ten month old son opened wide and vomited all over the man’s chest.   
  
At least it wasn’t his face. She would have started running, cheap apartment be damned, if it had been his face.   
  
Antonio blinked at the off-white dribble slowly oozing its way down his dark green shirt. “…feel better Roma?”   
  
What.   
  
“Ah, it looks like you do.” In fact, her son _had_ finally gone back to sleep, gurgling contentedly after a job well done. Little… “I’m sorry. Can you wait a few minutes for me to change out of this? I’ll show you the rooms then.” Without waiting for her reply, Carriedo bounded up the stairs, two at a time. He turned a corner at the landing, but not before she could see him peeling off his shirt, careful not to let any of her son’s mess drip onto the floor.   
  
Fuck she needed a stiff drink. “Look what you’ve done now.” Lovina couldn’t really scold Romano, not now. She busied herself wiping the corners of his mouth with a little towel, and hoped that Carriedo wouldn’t change his mind and throw her off his property. “Don’t tell me you’re allergic to _that_ kind of oatmeal too…”   
  
Romano slept on.   
  
Carriedo returned in a bright red pullover. “Alright, sorry about that,” shouldn’t _she_ be the one apologizing? “Follow me. They’re in the basement. If you have any questions, just ask!”   
  
Lovina followed Carriedo as he led her down another flight of stairs. At first she had thought ‘Basement? That explains the rent.’ Of course, once she saw the size of the rooms, and how they were furnished, her conclusions were thrown out the window. Windows. He hadn’t been lying; there was really decent light in the basement.   
  
Carriedo leaned against a wall as Lovina slowly walked around the perimeter of the living room, trying to find a fault. Romano was still asleep, and she was grateful. Carriedo had been no-nonsense in showing the apartment ( _it was twice as big as where she was currently living…_ ) to her, and he’d answered her questions easily ( _unlike that bastard of a landlord she’d had to deal with through her pregnancy…_ ). She badly wanted the apartment; even if it was just someone’s basement in a neighborhood she’d otherwise never be able to live in.   
  
“It’s just the two of you?”   
  
There had to be a catch. And maybe this was it.   
  
“…just ask.”   
  
Carriedo raised one eyebrow. “Huh?”   
  
“I know what you want to ask.” It was what everyone wanted to ask. She was young, she didn’t have a ring…“Just say it.”   
  
Antonio wondered where this was going. The lady ( _what was her name again?_ ) seemed nice, but a little twitchy. He hoped it wasn’t anything he’d said. “…no pets then?”   
  
Lovina gritted her teeth. “About. His father.”   
  
Oh. “That’s none of my business, not if you don’t want to tell me and if you’re not going to try to sneak somebody else into my basement.” Antonio nodded. His last tenant had tried to sneak people in once or twice. It had been very strange for Antonio to wake up to random women in his kitchen, cooking breakfast. But Antonio had told Francis to stop it, so it had never turned into a problem. “I’d like to know about that, but that’s pretty understandable.”   
  
He was serious. He really wasn’t going to ask. Lovina appreciated it, and respected Carriedo just a tiny bit more ( _where had she seen his face before?)_ “…do you have an application?”   
  
“Sure! You’re the first to respond though, so you’ll probably get the rooms.” Antonio dug through his pants pocket to find a pen and pulled a sheaf of papers out of a drawer. “It’s first come, first serve.”   
  
Everyone else who had read Carriedo’s ad had probably thought it was a joke. Lovina certainly had. She hadn’t seen cheaper rent in her life; not even back home in Italy. “Fair.”   
  
Carriedo walked them to the door after that. There really wasn’t a reason for Lovina and Romano to linger at his house any longer. Time to take the bus back to the city; maybe if Romano was up for it she’d take him to the park. She only had so many sick days, better to use them to the fullest. “I hope you and Romano have a great day!”   
  
“Thank you very much, Mr. Carriedo. You too.” Nice, polite, capped with a small smile… Lovina was every inch the demure woman her life had taught her how to be. The politeness had been acquired from her aunt; the shallow aura of pleasantness from her various jobs in America. The smile she had learned from her brother. It was the best weapon in her arsenal ( _and even she wasn’t as good at it as he was_ ).   
  
“Who?” Lovina’s smile froze. Was he joking with her, or…? “Oh, you mean _me._ Heh, I guess I didn’t introduce myself properly over the phone either. My name’s Antonio Fernandez. My mother’s last name was Carriedo.”   
  
Lovina hated the feeling she got when she wasn’t in command of a situation. It happened a lot. “Lovina Vargas.”   
  
Carrie— Fernandez perked up. “Oh, are you Spanish too?”   
  
Hardly. “Italian.”   
  
He didn’t take offense at her curtness, which was good, because she often forgot to be nice and polite and smiling when she was at home. Usually she was short-tempered, petulant and frowning. Fernandez might as well know about that before he rented her his basement. “I should have guessed, right Romano?”   
  
Lovina was prepared to go, at that point. But someone _had_ to have the last word. “ Woma.” She looked down at her son, who looked up at her in return, eyes wide. Hadn’t he been asleep?   
  
Fernandez waved and laughed ( _was he always doing that?_ ). “That’s right! And I’ll get you your soup next time too, Roma.”   
  
For whatever reason she felt the need to explain, right before she left ( _ran_ _away_ ). “It was his first word.”   
  
Antonio didn’t stop smiling even after the pair disappeared from his sight. He shook his head, yes, and closed his front door. But the smile remained even after he sat down at his computer and began to write.   
  


* * *

  
“Is this the last one? And I told you, call me Antonio!”   
  
“I-it is.” That was not a stutter. It wasn’t. Fuck. It had been. Lovina tried to hide her face in the box of winter clothes she was currently unpacking. Fake fur rubbed calmingly against her cheek and she could _feel_ Antonio walk up behind her.   
  
_THUMP_   
  
Her heart was a traitor. Except. Oh. It was just Antonio setting down the last of the boxes from the truck. She had rented it to move Romano’s and her belongings from their last apartment. That’s all it was.   
  
“Need any more help?”   
  
She didn’t need to think when people asked her that question. “No.”   
  
“Alright. I’ll be upstairs if you need me!”   
  
Lovina made sure he was on the stairwell before muttering her “thanks.” Because it was less embarrassing that way, and she knew he’d somehow hear her anyway. In the short time she’d been communicating with her new landlord, Lovina had learned that sometimes he had freakishly good hearing.   
  
“You’re welcome!” And there it was.   
  
That was the man she would be leaving her son to, starting Monday next. Lovina could see Feliciano’s frowning face when she closed her eyes. All, “He needs you now” and “Ve, how could you do that to little Roma?” She told the face to stuff it. Lovina wasn’t an idiot. She was a provider!   
  
Sort of ( _Feliciano’s cash had come through in time for her first month’s payment to Antonio…_ ).   
  
The important part was that she had spent two weeks searching sex offender registries and criminal record databases, and subtly asking around the neighborhood if there was anything weird about Mr. Fernandez. All Lovina had taken away from these two weeks were sore feet and the discovery that Antonio didn’t just have a clean record; he had a _sparkling_ one. Politicians would cut off their arms for the results of his background check.   
  
He’d been a lifeguard in college.   
  
He had first aid training.   
  
He was the oldest of she didn’t even remember how many, and he’d taken care of them all, growing up.   
  
He was a well-loved, well-off newspaper columnist ( _...like hell was she ever reading a Cheer-up Charm again_ ).    
  
He didn’t even scream when Romano chewed on his fingers… if Lovina had been _slightly_ jealous of her brother, she didn’t know what she felt about Antonio (s _o maybe she had issues_ ).   
  
“Roma?” He was lying on the blanket she had left him on, contentedly chewing on the edge of a towel. “Do you like it here?” It was stupid, but Lovina needed to know that she had done something right. Romano was the only person she had, so Romano was the one she asked.  
  
He drooled. She knew it wasn’t in response to her question, but Lovina decided it stood for “Of course, I’d be happy wherever you picked for us. You’re the best mother ever. And really pretty.”  
  
Romano sneezed and Lovina couldn’t help but agree.   
  
The future was looking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starting this series back up again. I’ll update it whenever, most likely whenever another story is refusing to jump out of my head. And like in the fake column: ideas, concrit and suggestions’ll be welcomed with open arms. Now onto some notes!
> 
> XXX-XXXX: was tempted to put a real phone number. Like, look up “Antonio Fernandez” on the internet and give you that number and see how many people do a reverse phone search and have a heart attack. But then I felt creepy so I stopped (there’s one in Seattle. Huh).
> 
> “moving to Germany with me”: take this as you will.
> 
> “I won’t break”: It’s been my experience that the people who actually say things like this are the ones who break down hysterically.
> 
> WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!: Sometimes babies cry because they’re hungry; sometimes because they need their diapers changed. Romano? Just ‘cause.
> 
> Also: you know what’s a bitch to find synonyms for? The word ‘shirt.’
> 
> “Oh, are you Spanish too?”: just poking some fun. Poor Lovina. And her first name is a beach. Authors Life is not kind to her.
> 
> "Woma": = Roma in baby-pronunciation. Imagine him puff-faced and frowning, and feel all your inner bits melt.
> 
> Double Also: I have two aims with this story. 1) apologize to Spain for all the stories with the warning ‘Spain is not the sharpest crayon’ and 2) KO by saccharine fluff for all of you. Mwah. Ha. Ha.


	3. Boss and His Henchman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Romano's early childhood is full of speech, spots, splats, spats and siestas. Antonio is there for him every step of the way.

_Romano: Age 1_   
  
For a very long time Romano used three words, and only three, to describe the world around him. To interact with it. To make his opinions known. The first, of course, had been his name. It was neither his favorite word nor the one he used most often, but as the first word he had ever spoken, “Woma” held something special all its own in Romano’s little heart. At the worldly age of one, Romano enjoyed the sound of his own name. It was his standby, the string of syllables he’d force out when the other two words weren’t getting him what he wanted. And a gurgled “Woma” meant that whatever Romano wanted, he wanted _now_.   
  
Romano’s second word was ‘Mama’ and he had learned it fairly quickly after his own name. ‘Mama’ was always there. ‘Mama’ was safe. ‘Mama’ made sure he never had to cry alone because she kept crying with him until he was done and even after that, usually, she’d keep going and sometimes that would make him start all over again. When Romano cried for his ‘Mama,’ that’s exactly what he wanted. Maybe the things he wanted from her were different, one day juice the next day a blanket. But hell came to the nice passerby who thought he or she could get away with wiping Romano’s nose or returning a toy to him when he was screaming for “MAAAAAAAMMMMAAAAAAAAAAAA!”   
  
The third word was short, practical and versatile. It became the most powerful weapon in Romano’s verbal arsenal just hours after he felt he was comfortably able to use it. In Romano’s limited vocabulary, “No” meant ‘yes’ meant ‘I’m cold’ meant ‘Pay attention to me or else I’ll develop a complex and blame it all on you _I swear_.’ Once in a while, it actually meant ‘no.’ Only Lovina could tell the difference.   
  
Much to Antonio’s confusion.   
  
For a day or so, Antonio had let himself ride on the illusion that the ‘no’ was meant for him. Romano had named himself, had something to call Lovina, and here was a third word? It had to be for the third person in his world!   
  
It wasn’t.   
  
It took Romano much longer to find a word for Antonio. ‘Landlord’ was too clunky and Antonio would never want him to use it. And no matter how many times Antonio stood over Romano’s crib, pointing to himself and repeating ‘An-to-ni-o’ slowly, the name was just too tricky. Too many syllables. Too many different shapes a little mouth had to make. Antonio hadn’t given up; he’d tried to compromise with nicknames. But Romano wouldn’t say ‘Toni.’ ‘Toño’ was no good. ‘Mr. Fernandez Carriedo’ was useless although Antonio really didn’t think it had been necessary of Lovina to laugh at him when he tried it.   
  
What eventually, finally stuck was something that an older, wiser, impossibly teenaged Romano would wish he could erase from history. Or from the idiot’s hard drive, at least, because if there was one thing as swift as embarrassment it was Boss’s ability to get the baby videos playing for everyone within earshot.   
  
It had started the first day Romano’s mother had abandoned him with the strange, loud shape who was always smiling, even when he was asleep at the kitchen table. Romano hadn’t trusted the man. He had started crying in revenge as soon as the door had closed behind his Mama.   
  
Antonio had taken it in stride, and began every trick he knew of to calm a fussy baby. Naturally, he accompanied the rocking with a pep talk. “Alright, Romano! Mama has to go out and work to support you two, so you get to stay with Uncle An-to-ni-o,” he enunciated his words even though he didn’t know how much good it would do, “during the day! It’s going to be great!”   
  
Romano had hiccupped in response.   
  
A little bit of Antonio’s heart melted clear away. “And you don’t have to worry about a thing. Sometimes I’ll have to work, but that just means you get to come with me when I go to the park, oh you’ll like the park there’re ducks there. And you’ll get to be the first baby ever brought into the office, because technically we aren’t supposed to but they all like me there and you’re adorable so they won’t mind. You can even help!” He pinched Romano’s red cheeks, lightly, and smiled. “You can count on me, Roma. Don’t think of me as your babysitter. I’m… I’m your boss! Can you say Boss? _Booooosssssss_ …”   
  
Romano blinked. The loud man was being weird again.   
  
“No?” Antonio had pulled out an old rocking chair from his littlest sister’s room while the Vargases had been moving in. He’d put it in his own living room, though. Just in case Lovina and Romano wanted to visit him. Just in case.   
  
He walked over to the chair as Romano began to cry again. “Thought so. One day, Roma. We’ll just have to keep working on it!”   
  
He did keep working on it. And, without realizing it, Antonio gave himself a name Romano could say.   
  
“BAAAAAAAAAAA!”   
  
Antonio had turned his back for _one second_ to wash his hands. “Roma, what?”   
  
Strapped in his highchair, Romano slammed his fists against the plastic tray in front of him and screamed his little lungs out. “BAA!”   
  
Rinsing his soapy hands off, Antonio ran through a mental checklist. “You don’t need to be changed… and you’ve already had your lunch… Roma, does this mean you want a hug?” He really hoped so. Antonio’s favorite cure for crankiness was the common hug.   
  
“…No.” Romano’s favorite word again. Antonio had mistakenly hoped he’d grow out of it. Instead it seemed like Romano used the word more and more often as the weeks went by.   
  
Antonio dried his hands off quickly. He’d been planning on getting another few paragraphs out while Romano ate, but all that could wait. His editor probably wouldn’t call to check up on him for another few days; Antonio was notoriously good at keeping his deadlines. Mostly good. Better than a lot of people. His editor worried too much. Antonio was perfectly dependable. “Okay then, how about Boss puts his computer away and then we can play ‘Writer’s Block’!”   
  
Playing Writer’s Block mostly consisted of Antonio ignoring his work for as long as he could. It was a game he liked to play, and Romano usually liked it too because during the game he got a lot more attention than when it was over. But that wasn’t what he’d been asking for, so Romano kept calling out. “BAAAAAAAAAA!!!!”   
  
After ten more minutes of the same syllable ( _…at least it’s not ‘no’_ ) Antonio was at his wit’s end. “Shit! Roma, what? What is it? What’s wrong?!” He had tried to leave the room to get Romano’s favorite toy. Romano had screamed at him. He had tried food, warm milk, a diaper change. Anything. But Romano was as clean as he ever was, was full and only quieted for a moment when Antonio braved the screams to bring him his stuffed squirrel. Finally, Antonio gave up. He slumped into the chair next to Romano’s and stared up at the chubby little glare being directed his way.   
  
Romano nodded, more or less. And pointed. “Baa.”   
  
A rusty switch in Antonio’s brain flipped open. A light bulb flickered on. “Y-you… you wanted me to—me, you meant… you—me… _me_?!?!”   
  
Romano was trying to say _Boss_.   
  
Several hours later, Antonio startled Lovina by shouting and flailing as soon as she opened the door. “Lovina? Lovi, Lovi!” At first she was worried that he was angry at her for using the front door, which was technically his alone. He’d said the key was for emergencies… but she was really tired and she wanted to sit down before descending another set of stairs. And they shared the kitchen area. She could sit at the table without Antonio making a fuss.   
  
“I’m sorry for coming in this way, I—”   
  
Antonio interrupted her by shoving a frowning baby into her face. _Her_ frowning baby. “Romano learned a new word today!” He waited. Romano didn’t do anything but drool. Antonio lost a little bit off the edge of his excitement. “Say it! Roma… come on, say it.” Romano yawned. “…please?” Nothing. “Roma…”   
  
Was there a joke she was missing? Lovina held her hands out expectantly. “Give him. Don’t let Mr. Fernandez confuse you Roma, shush.”   
  
As soon as he was safely transferred to her arms by a deflated Antonio, Romano decided it was time to speak. “…Baa.”   
  
“What?” Was that it or was that just a baby’s babbling?   
  
Romano began to try and wriggle out of his mother’s grasp. “Baa! Baaa!” He waved his arms wildly towards Antonio.   
  
“That’s it! That’s…” Antonio caught one of Romano’s flailing hands in his own. “He has a name for me now. I think what he means is ‘Boss’ but he can’t say it all the way. I even called and asked and after I told them what I needed it for the IT guy from the Times showed me how to use the camera in my computer ( _Who knew they had those?_ ) and I have videos of him saying it and the IT guy even showed me how to save them to a disk and I put one on your desk downstairs.”   
  
Lovina had practice in understanding long and winding speeches from dealing with Feliciano. She couldn’t comprehend Antonio’s excitement, though. Why had he gotten so worked up? What did he care that she had a smart and adorable and near-perfect son who hadn’t stopped asking for ‘Baa’? “Th-thank you?”   
  
Romano hadn’t pulled his little hand away yet, so Antonio didn’t move his larger one either. The sound of the name Romano had given him was music to Antonio’s ears, a triumph after weeks of hard work ( _even though most of the work had been to the tune of An-to-ni-o_ ). It was probably the cutest thing Antonio had ever encountered.   
  
Even when Romano started chewing on his fingers.   
  
  
_Romano: Age 2 and a Half_   
  
The spots showed up on Sunday evening, the night before Lovina had to give a presentation at seven in the morning. She’d already put Romano to bed, because he’d been acting up, crying and complaining and chewing on the end of her dress. Not that Romano hated going to bed; he loved sleeping almost as much as his mother did. The punishment was _being told_ to go to bed, so of course Roma had made an even bigger fuss until blankets and dreams won over and he fell asleep.   
  
When the screams started up again, Lovina assumed Romano had had a bad dream. She waited a few minutes for his cries to subside, because maybe Roma would go back to sleep on his own. And she was so tired and the couch was warm and she was almost asleep herself.   
  
“MAMAAAAAAAAAA!”   
  
It was no good. Nothing in her would let her sleep while Romano cried like that. Grumbling, Lovina pushed herself away from the soft cushions of her haven. She wound her way around the odd toy and newspaper Romano had left on the floor, and let herself into the bedroom she shared with her son. She didn’t turn on the light. “Romano?”   
  
“AAAAAAAAAAH!”   
  
The first thing she saw was the blood. In the darkness, it appeared as though Romano was covered in it, and soon Lovina’s voice joined her son’s.   
  
The next morning, even though she knew it had only been a trick of the light, Lovina couldn’t get the image out of her mind. But she had work. She had to leave. Dammit. “Mama will be back as soon as possible, okay?”   
  
Romano gave her a Look. She knew what that Look meant, didn’t like that she wasn’t the one using it, and turned and practically ran so she didn’t have to see it anymore. Antonio didn’t notice. “I know you want your Mama, Roma, but she already ran out of her sick days. She’ll be back at the end of the day. But Boss promises he isn’t going anywhere!”   
  
He’d scheduled an appointment to interview a local small-business owner, but things like that could easily be canceled. There were always other stories. And who knew the cupcake shop on 14th’s owner had a daughter who had just gotten over the chicken pox too? The world was so _small_. And it was really nice of the lady at the shop to offer him free oatmeal. Not that he could drive over and get it, with Romano scratching at himself every time Antonio looked away.   
  
Where was Romano, anyway—“Romano, no!” Antonio dropped his phone, swooped down to the carpet Romano had been rolling on in an attempt to scratch his entire body, and picked the naked, crying boy up. “Don’t scratch, remember? That’ll only make you bleed again and you don’t want that to happen!” And how had Romano gotten his clothes off by himself?   
  
In addition to crying, Romano began to scream.   
  
After two oatmeal baths ( _he’d had his own lying around and no, he probably wasn’t free on Thursday night since Roma was sick and all, why do you ask?_ ), an entire bottle of calamine lotion Antonio hadn’t known he still had, and four old socks, things finally began to get better. At first Romano hadn’t wanted to get into the baths. Then he hadn’t wanted to get out and had almost flooded Antonio’s bathroom as a result. Then Romano had tried to eat the lotion, before deciding that it was scary and disgusting and he didn’t want it anywhere near him. Before deciding again that it was actually okay because it made him feel better and letting it stay.   
  
In Antonio’s opinion, Romano had used up a whole year of his allotted fussing in one day, but he beat back his frustration, even when Romano threw the socks at his face for the fifth time. Antonio thought itching was awful too, even if he didn’t really remember what it was like to have the chicken pox. And as Romano’s Boss, he couldn’t let Roma down! He had to do the best he could!   
  
Even when that required wearing a pair of socks on his own hands to show Romano it was okay. Typing, Antonio reflected, was really hard when you had bright yellow socks on your hands and a squirming little boy in your lap. A squirming little boy who alternated between trying to ‘help’ you write with his own red sock hands and scratching himself when you weren’t looking.   
  
Eventually, Antonio gave up doing anything constructive and let Romano type whatever he wanted. Winning that battle against Boss got Roma giggling, distracted, and Antonio found that he didn’t care that he wasn’t getting any work done. He had half a mind to scrap the cupcake shop idea entirely.   
  
Two weeks later, when Romano was finally better, the letters began flooding in:   
  
_“Dear Mr. Cheer-up Charms,_   
_Thank you soooo much for writing that sweet column about chicken pox cures. I’m a sexy single mother, and…”_   
  
  
_Romano: Age 3 Years, 1 Month_   
  
**SHATTER**   
  
It was just a lamp, it wasn’t irreplaceable.   
  
**SMASH**   
  
Okay, that vase had been hand-blown. But to be honest, Antonio had never liked it anyway.   
  
“Okay Roma, maybe we should…” Antonio wasn’t sure how to say it. He knew he had to say something before he lost the rest of the breakables in his house. But he’d finally gotten Romano to help on cleaning day and Antonio had been trying to do that ever since Romano had been old enough to hold onto a dust rag. He didn’t want Romano to stop just because he was bad at it! “Maybe we should take a break to clean up before we continue cleaning!” Yeah! That sounded good.   
  
Romano tried to hide his face behind the miniature broom Antonio had made for him. “Don’t wanna.”   
  
**CRASH**   
  
Antonio’s sister had made that tile for their father when she had been ten. Antonio had the creeping realization that the next time she decided to drop in on him, he was probably going to die. He was going to die painfully and all for what? …Roma’s shocked look was pretty cute, still. He knew what he’d done was wrong. At least Antonio knew Romano wasn’t totally morally bankrupt. All he needed was to learn! “O-okay! Here, let go of that.”   
  
Romano dropped the little broom onto the floor. “No.”   
  
“Wait, but didn’t you just…?” Antonio’s siblings had all taken very quickly to speaking. They hadn’t had any problems with one language, not even with two. Romano was different. Already three years old, he still mystified Antonio by jabbering away all the time… and consistently misusing words and phrases. And whenever he got flustered, Romano tended to stop with trying to connect his words and intentions altogether, returning to his favorite language: ‘No’ means everything.   
  
Antonio wondered if teaching him Spanish would help any. “Hey, Roma, repeat this after me: Dame un—”   
  
“No.”   
  
It had been worth a shot. “Maybe we’ll try that later.”   
  
Romano surveyed the destruction he had wrought on Antonio’s second floor sitting room. “Woma. No.”   
  
Antonio tried to fit the larger pieces of ceramic from the broken tile together. Maybe if he used glue she’d never be able to tell? “Stay there for a second, Roma. Boss can’t let you walk on this: you’ll hurt your feet.”   
  
Frustrated, Romano shoved the end table next to him with just enough force to send the crystal candy dish on it straight to the ground. “Woma no!”   
  
Antonio jumped at the crash and tried his damnedest not to shriek/teach Romano how to swear in Spanish before he taught him any of the cute phrases like ‘I love you’ or ‘Boss is the best!’ “Romano—.” He fully intended on finishing that sentence with ‘what’s gotten into you?!’ but something else caught his attention first. Second if the broken dish was added to the count. “Roma. No. Woma no… Womano. Romano?! You were saying your full name? Is that what you were trying to tell me? Aww, come here.” Antonio remembered the sharp mess on the floor. “Never mind, I’ll pick you up.”   
  
He did, cooing “Womano, Romano you did it, one more word!”   
  
Romano squirmed in Antonio’s arms, first a little and then a lot. Finally, he started kicking Antonio’s torso and pulling his hair. “Womano! _No_!” stood for ‘I have to take a piss and if you don’t let me go I’m doing it right here!’ but Antonio didn’t realize that until a few seconds after a hot, wet trail began weaving its way down the side of his pants. The smell was unmistakable.   
  
Antonio tried to think of it less as having been urinated on and more as another mess to clean up. “Right. Romano, repeat this after me: I have to pee.”   
  
What he _wanted_ to say was ‘no’ which stood for ‘I want dry clothes,’ but his Boss’s expression looked weirder than usual. Romano scrunched up his face, tried his almost-best and only stuttered a little. “Ha-have to pee.”   
  
The urine was mixing with the pottery dust and bits of glass. …But Antonio had been meaning to get rid of the rug they were on anyway. He offered up a half-hearted “good job Roma, that’s what you should say” before retreating from the room altogether. Before worrying about anything else he’d get baths and clean clothes for the both of them. He’d teach Romano about always cleaning up his messes some other time.   
  
  
_Romano: Age 4 Years, 11 Months, 21 Days_   
  
“Good evening. Mr. Vargas?” She had been expecting a Miss. The form Romano had brought back from home had clearly said that his parent-teacher conference would be attended by his mother, Miss ScribbleScribble Vargas. It was all very clear.   
  
The man shook his head and her hand at the same time, and settled into a chair that was far too small for him. “Nope. It’s Fernandez. Antonio.”   
  
“Oh, I’m sorry, sorry.” Did she have any Fernandez children in her class this year? She tried to be subtle as she shuffled through her papers, looking for the class list. Ah, yes! There it was. And… “Are you here about Maria? I’m sorry, but that conference isn’t scheduled for another twenty minutes.” In twenty minutes the janitor would be back with normal chairs from the auditorium at any rate. She wondered how Mr. Fernandez could look so composed while perched on a chair meant for five-year-olds.   
  
Mr. Fernandez shook his head again and smiled. “Wrong again: I’m here for Romano!” At her blank look, he continued. “Roma’s mom had to work late and she couldn’t get out of it, so I’m here instead.”   
  
Right. Right. Why hadn’t she thought of that before? _Stupid…_ This was her second year teaching, but she was still making all the rookie mistakes! Like not remembering to ask for full-size chairs, and not remembering whether she had a Maria in her class and not remembering the face of Romano’s father! He picked the little boy up every day after school, he was nice to look at, why hadn’t Romano inherited any of his politeness, why was he looking at her like that, _had she said any of that out loud_? “Uh.”   
  
“Miss?” People said Antonio was spacey all the time but this was kind of weird. “Are you alright?”   
  
She hadn’t. Thank God. Still, maybe she wasn’t cut out for this. Maybe she should have gone for that law degree. Was there still time to quit? She snuck a look at her calendar, which confirmed her suspicions. It was still September. Damn. “Right, well. Romano is doing fine for his age; maybe he could use a little extra attention to his speaking skills, he has trouble, but overall he’s performing right in the middle of the class.”   
  
For all intents and purposes, Antonio heard the mousy woman in front of him telling him his Roma was a genius not hindered by his tendency not to say much of anything except ‘no.’ “That’s great!”   
  
He wasn’t angry at her for calling his child mediocre? Was she lucky enough to get an understanding parent, and so early in the evening? “However… Mr. Fernandez, your son will need to work on his sharing.” She waited for Mr. Fernandez to scoff at her. He didn’t. Emboldened, she continued. “He barely speaks to the other boys, and he only lets the girls near his crayons after I ask him to play nicely repeatedly. As his father, you have to remember…”   
  
Antonio stopped listening. She’d said father.   
  
Father.   
  
Should he correct her? Probably.   
  
Did he want to? No. Not at all. The last thing he wanted was to say those words aloud, because he didn’t want to make them any truer than they already were. Maybe he wasn’t Romano’s father, technically, but who else could place even half a claim on the title? …Besides Romano’s _real_ father. He would have some sort of claim, although Antonio didn’t think it should count for anything.   
  
Antonio had told Lovina Vargas, years before, that Romano’s father was none of his business. After over four years of laughter, tears, bedtime stories, naps, ‘no’s, getting vomited on, singing the nightmares away… after all that Antonio dared to entertain the notion that it was very much his business. Because he had half a claim, and that was half more than some— some _somebody_ who’d never shown up at all.   
  
He wondered if he was thinking ill of the dead.   
  
He wondered if the teacher was done rambling yet.   
  
“…any questions?”   
  
Antonio Fernandez Carriedo had magnificent timing. “Nope! I’ll remember to pass on the message to his mother later tonight, it was good meeting you, I’ve got to get home bye!”   
  
Just outside the classroom was a row of tiny plastic chairs, for parents to wait awkwardly on. A man and two older women sat in the three chairs closest to the door. The man stood when Antonio walked past him, and made his way into the classroom. The two women continued to gossip. Antonio didn’t care; his concern was sleeping on the chair furthest from the door.   
  
His concern fit the chair perfectly.   
  
Romano woke up, briefly, when Antonio picked him up. “Shupf Baa…”   
  
Antonio wished he had his camera with him; Roma hadn’t called him Baa in a long time, not since he’d mastered the ‘ssss’ sound. “Go back to sleep, Roma. I’ll wake you up when we’re home and I’m done making dinner.”   
  
Romano hated being told what to do. “Let **me**!” He struggled.   
  
But Antonio’s grip was solid. He held Romano fast as he headed for the exit. “Remember to try and put what you want to say in full sentences, Romano. Try it again: one more time!”   
  
Why did Boss always have to make things more difficult for him? Stupid mean stupidhead. “Let me **walk**!”   
  
Antonio thanked a young couple for holding the school doors open for him as he made his way outside. “This way is faster, Roma. We’re going home.” He heard Romano give a feeble protest before settling back to sleep, arms around Antonio’s neck.   
  
He might not have a lot of the things it took to be called Romano’s father. Like a certificate from the state, or a ring on Lovina’s finger, or matching DNA. But no one could take what Antonio _did_ have away from him. Not ever.   
  
  
_Romano: Age 5 Years, 4 Months, 9 Days, 5 Hours, 23 Minutes_   
  
It was not the first time Lovina Vargas had come home to the sight of her landlord unconscious underneath a coffee table and her son snoring gently from a leather armchair nearby. It probably wouldn’t be the last either, so instead of waking them, Lovina went to kitchen to see if they had taken a break from napping to make her dinner. Sometimes they did, when a project ran long and she was late coming home, and a covered dish or three would be waiting for her on the stove.   
  
Those were the evenings when she allowed them to sleep further.   
  
Sometimes they did not, at which point Lovina decided it was Antonio’s own damn fault for trying to ruin her son’s sleep schedule again. If Romano was asleep at 5:30 in the evening, he wouldn’t want to go to bed again at 9 o’clock and why couldn’t accountants be allowed to have naps in the middle of the day fuck she was jealous why? Hmph.   
  
Nothing waited for Lovina in the kitchen, except for Antonio’s computer blinking its orange low battery indicator at her. She suppressed an urge to shut the thing down and set her briefcase down next to it. Someone needed to make dinner, someone needed to do something about Antonio’s computer, the answering machine light was blinking, and her feet were killing her. And Roma would be hungry when he woke…   
  
Which meant Antonio needed to wake up first and get to work.   
  
The sun finished setting around the time Lovina returned to the living room. Experience told her to turn on the lights before going any further, and the extra thought paid off. Neither Romano nor Antonio woke at the sudden brightness, but Lovina was able to see the plush squirrel on the ground in front of her before she slipped on it and twisted her ankle. Again.   
  
“Roma, take better care of your toys.” Not that she was one to talk, since she’d broken another music player somehow. And that stupid thing had cost far more than Tomato the Squirrel had. Well. No. Tomato the Squirrel was the sort of cheap toy that became priceless once a little boy lost him. Lovina hoped that would never happen again.   
  
On the armchair, Romano rubbed at his eyes. “No.”   
  
His mother understood. “You need to get up now for dinner.” The promise of food woke Romano up fully, like Lovina knew it would.   
  
“What’s today?”   
  
Lovina caught Romano’s leg as he ungracefully tried to tumble down from the chair on his own. Handing him his toy, she slipped an arm around his back and lifted him up before he could fall. “I don’t know yet.”   
  
Romano stuck his tongue out in Antonio’s general direction. “Lazy.”   
  
She knew that wasn’t necessarily true. She knew she wasn’t supposed to encourage things like that. She knew she had been staring at numbers since nine o’clock in the morning and it had been hours since lunch. “Say it in a sentence, Roma.”   
  
“Lazy is lazy.”   
  
“Good enough.”   
  
Oblivious to the insulting things being said about him in his own home, Antonio slept on. He was almost face down on the floor, ‘almost’ because the glasses digging into the side of his face propped him up. Lovina wondered why he always seemed to end up on the floor during naps. And why he never remembered to take his glasses off first.   
  
Her stomach rumbled.   
  
“Hey,” she tapped her toe lightly against the side of Antonio’s face. Lightly because cheap nylons ran too easily and her thrice-repaired pair were on their last figurative legs. Nail polish could only do so much. “Wake up.”   
  
Antonio’s hand twitched. “Nnnn…no.”   
  
Lovina narrowed her eyes, a look Romano knew too well. He put his hands over his ears. But only lightly; he wanted to hear if his Mama used any new words this time. “What do you mean _no_ , you fu—fuh—” the patiently waiting weight of a small, impressionable boy ( _and a smaller, less impressionable squirrel_ ) shifted in her arms. Well, damn. “ _You._ ”   
  
Antonio opened one eye, probably because he could feel someone trying to punch a hole through his face with anger and a stocking-clad foot and could feel someone else watching it all. “Oh, Lovi, are you home early?”   
  
“No.”   
  
Lovi got home around 5:30 unless she was late. Was she late? Antonio lifted his wrist to his face. After a few seconds to adjust to the light and the strange angle his glasses were at, he deduced it was “5:45 is something wrong?”   
  
She took her foot away. “No.”   
  
But she kept glaring at him, and then Antonio noticed Romano in her arms, joining in on the glaring too. At least Tomato wasn’t glaring. Antonio didn’t think it was. Why was Antonio always being glared at by Vargases and why could he still never figure out what they were trying to tell him? Maybe Tomato would know. Antonio tried to sit up.   
  
Lovina’s foot stopped him.   
  
“Uh, Lovi…?” If she told him ‘No’ he would be royally confused. And maybe wonder if she’d been creeping into his dreams lately. Except Roma hadn’t quite been in _those_ , and where were the handcuffs—?   
  
“You almost hit your head.” Oh _that’s_ how there were coasters and magazines floating above him! It was a glass tabletop! …when had he gotten on the floor?   
  
Romano scowled. “Stupid.”   
  
They said it together. It wasn’t because they were on the same wavelength; it was just something they both often had to say. “Roma, _sentences_.”   
  
Romano kept scowling. “Boss is stupid.”   
  
Antonio pulled himself out from under his coffee table without disrupting any of the coasters ( _or the magazines_ ) and jumped up. He patted Romano’s hair, even though he’d just been insulted. “Awww,” he gave Romano’s forehead a lopsided kiss, “but you’re still my favorite henchman, Roma.”   
  
Romano’s face was less a face and more a large, red scowl. “Boss is _really_ stupid.”   
  
The words flew right over Antonio’s head, because he had a secret guess that this was one of those times when what a Vargas said wasn’t what a Vargas _meant_. But something else entirely made Antonio giddy. “That was _four_ whole words, Roma that was really good!” He flung his arms wide and gave Romano the biggest hug he could. Or rather, Antonio flung his arms wide and mostly gave Lovina a hug because she was bigger and the one standing there, squishing Romano in the process. He didn’t care. “See I _told_ you you could, how about Boss makes your favorite dinner tonight?”   
  
Lovina stood very, very still. Antonio’s head was resting on her shoulder. His heart beat next to hers. His glasses were pressing into her neck. “Y-you should get started on that. Then. For Roma.”   
  
“Right away!” He didn’t move.   
  
Alright, the glasses were really starting to bother her. She could feel he’d bent the frames again, and after she had gone to all the trouble of getting him new ones the last time he’d done that only for him to get depressed when he thought she’d thrown his old pair out and. And she’d lost her train of thought.   
  
She’d been living with Antonio Fernandez for too long. And he was still holding her. Dodge, evade, avoid. “What did you write about today?”   
  
“Hm?” Antonio leaned back and tried to readjust his glasses, only to find that when one lens was perfectly aligned with his eye, the other was down by his nose. That could be a problem.   
  
Romano was sick of being ignored. “Boss… Boss had a column due.”   
  
Antonio’s train of thought started to fly. “Romano that was **five** , no no no that counts as **_six_**!!! Roma you said six words all at once and they were a real sentence and you did it all by yourself and they were all different words mostly!” He went back in for a hug, squeezing his arms together as tight as he could. Unsatisfied with that display of affection, Antonio picked mother and child up, clear off the ground, and, laughing lightly, spun himself and his housemates in circles.   
  
Lovina coughed.   
  
Romano began to look green.   
  
Antonio, very abruptly, stopped. “…did you say ‘due,’ Roma?” Shitshitshitshit…   
  


* * *

 

Good Morning!

  


Thank you for all the letters! I’ve been getting more than ever from readers, which makes me really happy! They make my editor really happy too. This week in particular I received several letters from a group of students who stayed up all night reading my article archives instead of finishing their journalism project! That was very flattering, Journalism Club of XXXXXX University! But you have to remember that sleep is very important. Just like meeting deadlines.   
  
Sometimes it’s really tempting to forgo one or both of them. But remember, if you don’t get a good contract or if your editor isn’t very nice about being woken up at two in the morning with a first draft, then… things can go badly…  
  
---  
  
**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One down, an endless string of things to go.
> 
> Do I think they’d let him go to a parent-teacher conference without a blood or legal relationship to the kid? Maybe, maybe not. But you must remember: Spain’s Charm is Super Effective. On the whole, Spain is Super Effective. Lucky bastard.
> 
> “BAAAA!!!”: Romano can be pretty effective too.
> 
> “Dame un—”: not an indication of gratuitous not!English to come, just a silly nod.
> 
> “It was still September”: guess which day win prize?
> 
> “Shupf Baa…”: Shut up, Boss.
> 
> because he had a secret guess: Actually, Spain was wrong this time. Romano meant what he said. Most of the other times he doesn’t. Such is the comedy of miscommunication.
> 
> A note on Minimano: I’m one of those youngest child types who’ve never babysat. Therefore my search history is now full of lovely things like ‘when is the normal toilet training age’ and ‘child speech development.’ I think how I’ve got the kid going in the story is within the bounds of reason but if it’s not you know the drill.
> 
> A note on Minimano’s speech: Kid is slow on language development. He understands, but he has a hard time putting his thoughts out. He got by on few words at a young age, thanks to his mother being able to understand him (they’re so alike har har). When he got older, he had a hard time pronouncing things and battling out syllables. When forced to interact with other people, especially his peers, he chose to give up/aggression in the face of teasing. Therefore, if it seems like he’s pretty old to not be talking (he speaks plenty, he just doesn’t say much/repeats the same words all the time) all that much, it’s because he is. Spain and femano are trying to get Romano out of this track/onto normal speech patterns. To be honest, I don’t know anything about speech therapy so I don’t know if they’re doing it the right way. But yeah. TL;DR: What cheap metaphor?
> 
> A note on Spain: I’ve turned him into a bit of a Hughes. But c’mon. If there had been digital cameras all the way back when, Spanish history museums would be full to bursting with yellowing snapshots of ‘Unidentified Youth in Maid Dress #7779-N.’ “Roma you’re having a moment of cuteness I don’t understand I must document it with 8000 pictures at once BUHYOO!!!!”
> 
> Re 4.5 years no action: Readers of the Heist fill will know it could have been worse. Much worse. I like to think of Spain and Romano as great big stupid idiots when it comes to each other. It was four and a half years of TENSION.
> 
> Re Romano’s stuffed animal friend: Part 5. :D
> 
> Romano’s biological father: will sort of appear much later on. I intend to keep him and his story a secret until I get there. I’m using this to segue into a ‘pairings will be labeled on a chapter-by-chapter basis’ thing. The story is Spamano, but if you don’t want to see ‘wait there was past A/B!!! Or what the hell, Q/H??’ then the header is your friend.
> 
> [2/18]: I’m pretty sure this will have 18 main chapters, but I’m not 100% on that so… if the 18 changes it’s just because I’m not solid on a few parts.


	4. Her Birthday Intervention

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For her birthday, Lovina receives two offers: the first she can’t say no to fast enough, the second she’d never refuse.

Mostly circular and covered in lumpy white frosting, if the cake had had a face most would call it the sort only a mother would love. Luckily, the recently cooled confection was intended for one woman, and one woman alone: Romano’s mother. Romano was proud of the cake, because he’d helped a lot making it ( _even more than Boss knew about, why was Boss such a wimp with vanilla anyway?_ ), and because it smelled really good and because Boss had told him he’d done a good job even when he’d accidentally dropped three whole eggs into the batter.   
  
Boss hadn’t been as enthusiastic when Romano had accidentally turned the mixer on full power, but Romano had already forgotten the scolding because so had Boss and Romano had already taken his revenge.   
  
“Roma?” Boss looked stupid with all that flour in his hair. Stupid and old. “Think it’s time to decorate your Mama’s cake now?”   
  
Yeah. “No.”   
  
“Huh?” Boss scratched his head, sending a puff of white into the air.   
  
Romano didn’t know what was so hard to understand. “No.”   
  
Boss opened his mouth, shut it, and shook his head. Romano didn’t know what all that was about, but before he could explain ( _“…no.”_ ), Boss had pulled him up into a hug, and maybe Romano liked that a lot but that wasn’t important. What was important was that Boss had food coloring out and Romano needed to make a decision because Mama always said Boss was hopeless at figuring things out and so Romano said it too.   
  
Antonio wondered why the boy in his arms was glaring so intently at the two bottles of food coloring on the counter. But he didn’t question it; Roma spent a lot of time glaring. “Should we do the words in red or gre—” Antonio caught himself. “Should we do the words in red, Roma?”   
  
Romano nodded. “No.”   
  
“Green it is then!”   
  
The end result was a murky purple, after Romano pushed the bottle of red coloring into the bowl of green frosting before Antonio could stop him. It looked… it looked pretty awful, and Romano had gotten angry after Antonio had fished the bottle out ( _“Stupid Boss!”_ ). But Antonio thought Lovina would understand; she had baked with Romano before, or tried to.   
  
That or she would hit Antonio on the arm too, which would probably hurt a lot more than Roma’s flailing fists had. Oh the things Antonio did for the people he cared about… Like bake birthday cakes! He hadn’t made one in a while, not since before Lovi and Roma had moved in. His other tenants had always been away or busy on their birthdays. And Francis’s girlfriends had always made sure Francis never went without a cake or three ( _sometimes they jumped out of them too wasn’t that odd!_ ).   
  
“H-A-P-P-Y” He spoke the letters aloud as he frosted them onto Lovina’s cake. Every little thing helped, when Roma was still learning about words! “…B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y…” Antonio stopped, voice and hand ( _causing the end of the Y to trail off crookedly_ ). Normally he finished birthday cakes with names, to make them more personal. _Happy Birthday Roma_. Or titles. _Happy Birthday IT guy!!!_ But _Happy Birthday Lovina_ felt wrong. The cake was coming from little Roma as well, and he wouldn’t call his mother by her first name. ‘Lovi’ would be even stranger. But ‘Mama’ was all wrong for Antonio to say, even though it was just as true for her as ‘Lovina’ was… Antonio stood, holding the bag of frosting midair, frozen.   
  
Romano got bored. Grumbling a frustrated “Woma” under his breath, he grabbed the bag of frosting ( _stupid Boss made it ugly_ ) from his Boss’s hands and began to write ‘Mama’ because apparently Boss wasn’t capable of it.   
  
The resulting mess looked more like a blob than anything else.   
  
Roma’s eyes began to water and Antonio knew he had to act quickly. “Roma that was a _perfect_ flower! It’s great!” Romano tried to hide his sobbing face in his child-size apron, forgetting it had already collected a fair amount of batter and frosting over the course of the afternoon. The mixture of gooey flour paste, tears and snot did nothing to improve his mood.   
  
“ _AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!_ ”   
  
Antonio set the finished cake beyond Romano’s reach, just in case Roma decided to take out his frustrations physically. Roma did that sometimes, no matter what he thought about the things he ended up breaking or hurting. Antonio wished Romano would be more careful, but little boys would be little boys. Antonio had been pretty active himself, back when he’d been a kid…   
  
Unsatisfied with crying into his apron, and with the freshly baked cake sitting on a shelf higher up than he was tall, Romano swatted his hands in Antonio’s general direction. Until the phone began to ring.   
  
_RING_   
  
Antonio wasn’t expecting any calls. “I’ll get it Roma!” He stepped away from the little arms trying to smack him just in time.   
  
It was Lovina. “Antonio?”   
  
“Roma, it’s Lovi! Your mama!” Instinctively, Romano reached for the phone. Mama would listen to his problems. Remembering the last time he’d let Romano have his phone around the sink, Antonio pushed the speakerphone button instead. “Did something come up?” Please say no he and Romano had been planning her birthday dinner all week and Roma had finally decided he approved of the menu and the cake was already decorated and it was the _second_ cake of the day because Roma had upended half a bottle of vanilla in the first and…   
  
“I won’t be back for dinner. Some people from the office found out it was my birthday and… I couldn’t say no,” because they had offered to pay and it was a nice restaurant. What?   
  
Antonio took a deep breath and counted to ten in his head. “Are you sure?”   
  
Romano waited.   
  
“What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?” Antonio sounded suspicious. And she couldn’t hear Romano anywhere. Was Antonio lying to her? Was he trying to say that he didn’t want her to come home? Was he with someone else? Where was Roma?! “Yes I’m sure, and I’m sure I’ll have a wonderful time. I don’t care what you think!”   
  
“…Mama?”   
  
Oh. “…Mama was talking to somebody else, Roma.”   
  
If she said so. “No.”   
  
Antonio was so confused. “Is that a yes? Or… yes?” Was something going on that he was supposed to already know about?   
  
Lovina forced her voice under control as her colleagues neared where she stood by the elevators. She would be quick. Hopefully so would the evening, because she couldn’t stand most of the little tarts she worked with now. “C-can you watch Roma for me tonight? I’ll be back by ten, I promise.” Unless they took her to a bar and she found someone… oh who was she kidding? The one thing Lovina wanted for her twenty-eighth birthday was probably wondering why she hadn’t hung up on him yet. Idiot.   
  
“Of course I can. Don’t rush—” Romano grabbed Antonio’s free arm, and Antonio realized what he’d said. “I mean, you should get back quickly, but, uh, you can still have fun just don’t take too long doing it!” Yeah!   
  
What? “ _Riiight_. Roma?”   
  
Mama wasn’t coming home then? Did that mean. Did she already know. Did she not want. Did. But… “‘night, Mama.”   
  
Why did his voice have to sound so small? Why did he have to sound like she was skipping out on _his_ birthday? Lovina forced herself not to worry about it, kissed her son goodnight through a few airwaves that weren’t quite the same, and got into the elevator with a fake smile. He’d forgive her if she brought home dessert.   
  
Antonio put the phone back before picking a dejected, purple-frosted Romano up from his seat on the counter. “How ‘bout Boss draws you a bath, okay Roma? I’ll use bubbles and we can put Tomato in his plastic bag so he doesn’t get wet!” Romano sniffled and nodded. “I’ll put your Mama’s dinner in the oven to keep it warm for her, okay? Maybe she’ll want a little when she gets back…?” Antonio hoped she would. Because silly as it was, he was beginning to feel a little of the dejection Roma was exuding. It wasn’t very nice.   
  
Perhaps a good long shower of his own would cure it too.   
  


* * *

  
  
Bastard couldn’t take a hint. “I can’t. I have too much work to do. I’m… very attached to my work. Very busy.”   
  
A few other members of the Accounting department had followed Lovina and the mindless tarts off to the restaurant. A few of the few were people Lovina didn’t mind talking to, although she knew none of them particularly well.   
  
“I love a girl who knows how to focus.”   
  
But one of those members was a chauvinistic, arrogant, fucking annoying _jerk_ who had glued himself to Lovina’s side the moment she had sat down. He’d tried to dominate the conversation around the table for the majority of the meal. Although his idea of conversation tended more towards hitting on anything near him that had a pulse and legs to spread. Lovina wanted to punch him in the balls. Except who knew what kind of diseases she could get on her hands by doing that… Someone had called for the check already. She was going to be fine. She could stand ten more minutes of Smith trying to be ‘charming’ and ‘subtle’ and ‘manly’ before running as fast as she could out of the building and finally getting to go home.   
  
Or she could gouge his eyes out with a complementary toothpick.   
  
Hints aside, the bastard couldn’t take flat-out _rejection_. “Sometimes I fall asleep at my desk.”   
  
Smith chuckled and edged his chair closer to her. “Focus and fun at the same time, you’re too much Lovina!” Who said they were on first name terms? “I insist. Let me at least wait with you downstairs and if your ‘ride’ doesn’t come I’ll take you home.”   
  
He obviously didn’t believe that she had a ride coming. Which was stupid, because the third time she’d excused herself to the ladies’ room, she’d taken her purse with her so she could call Antonio and ~~beg~~ ask him to get her the hell out of there. Lovina stood up quickly from her place at the table, said her goodbyes (“ _Lovinaaaa, you should go clubbing with us!” ‘Not even if you paid me’_ ) and wondered too late if Smith would still follow her if she said she was going to the bathroom again. Probably. Jerk.   
  
The jerk, who had longer legs than Lovina did, caught up to her right before the elevator closed on her bid for sweet, sweet freedom. He stuck his hand between the doors and Lovina wished they would crush it. They didn’t. Neither did the automatic doors at the front of the building, where she adamantly stopped walking. She could tell Smith was still trying to bundle her off into his car and… urgh. It was disgusting.   
  
“I can still take you wherever you want.” She wanted to be anywhere away from him. “Hey, maybe if you’re not too tired, I know a little place—”   
  
What else, what else could she say… “I need to put my four-year-old son to bed. And he doesn’t like seeing strange men around our house.” Not unless they brought candy with them. But Smith didn’t need to know that, he’d probably drive over with a box full of chocolate bars if he knew Romano was that easy to ( _temporarily_ ) win over.   
  
“I love kids!”   
  
_Fucker_.   
  
“I have family in the CIA.” Probably. Maybe. Lovina had a lot of relatives she didn’t know about.   
  
At the phrase “serve our country” she wondered if it would be assault or self-defense if she stepped on his foot with the business end of her stilettos. Somehow, she doubted her parents would send over the family lawyer after not hearing from her for four years.   
  
“My husband _looks_ like a brainless moron, but he’s actually a jealous ex-officer of the Spanish secret police who was dishonorably discharged for ripping a guy’s heart out with his bare hands and eating it after the guy looked at me.” Lovina watched with barely contained glee as Smith tried to spin _that_ one into a compliment. Just as she was about to start talking about all the disgusting American businessmen ‘her husband’ had snuffed out in the line of duty, a familiar car sped into sight and stopped just short of parking on the sidewalk.   
  
Antonio jumped out of it without bothering to turn the engine off. “Is everything alright? You sounded really unhappy on the phone!”   
  
Screw small talk, Lovina didn’t want to have to explain herself, she just wanted to go home and maybe burn her suit jacket now that it smelled like cheap cologne. Smith ruined all her hopes by striding over to Antonio with a cocky smile and extending his hand. “Your English is very good!”   
  
Antonio didn’t know why it wouldn’t be, didn’t know why the stranger was talking to him and didn’t know why Lovina was looking at him like he’d just locked her out of the house in the snow. Antonio was used to not knowing things, though, so he contented himself with shaking Mr. Strength Competition’s hand. The man would get bored of it at some point…? “Thank you! Your grip is really strong!” Antonio then remembered something moderately important. “Oh, but I really need my hand to type. Because I’m a writer. Can I have it back?”   
  
“Of course, of course.” The stranger kept smiling. “You know, Lovina was telling me all about you. I must say, in my college days I was known as quite the…” Antonio let himself carefully tune out of the conversation. It was a skill.   
  
Lovina didn’t care. She rushed over to Antonio and, somewhat guiltily, let herself grab his arm possessively. “I’m very sorry, but we have to go.” …why was his sleeve soaking wet?   
  
Antonio was confused, and now his glasses were fogging up. And he was pretty sure Romano was trying to wriggle out of his car seat, which meant Antonio would have to make sure he hadn’t broken it again before they left. “We do?”   
  
A drop of water slid down a lock of Antonio’s hair and landed on Lovina’s shoulder. She shivered. “We _do_. _Dear_.”   
  
Smith’s grin faltered the tiniest fraction, and Lovina inwardly thanked Antonio for one of the better presents he could have given her. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Lovina. I’m glad you had a **wonderful** time.” What was _that_ supposed to be? A challenge? Was he trying to make Antonio jealous? Tsch… _amateur_. Antonio was as dense as a brick. She could kiss him in the middle of the street and he would only tell her he’d gotten the electric bill but he didn’t feel like calculating the cost again so it was on him.   
  
Dammit why did he have to _do_ things like that?   
  
Feeling a little something that might have been bravery ( _but was most likely impatient stupidity_ ), Lovina grabbed Antonio’s arm, pecked him on the lips, and fled into his car before he could say anything she didn’t want to hear.   
  
Romano saw the entire thing. “Gross.”   
  
Lovina buckled herself into the seat next to her son, face on fire. “…really gross.”   
  
Outside, Antonio was the least confused he had been all day. Because something had finally clicked in the stranger’s competitive smile. The stranger had a crush on Lovi! But she didn’t like him and was trying to get him to leave her alone and Antonio thought he’d seen a movie like this, except in the movie the male lead had been the female lead’s best friend and not her landlord or babysitter ( _the male lead had also been really pathetic about the female lead. Antonio liked to think that even though he was a lot of things, pathetic wasn’t one of them. Often_ ). And he’d felt bad for the guy who came in second in the movie. Except then he’d gotten paired off with the female lead’s sister’s best friend, or maybe it was the female lead’s best friend’s sister, Antonio couldn’t remember…   
  
Smith smirked. “A _writer_ , huh?”   
  
Or maybe it was the female lead’s best sister’s friend’s brother’s co-worker? “Hm?”   
  
Smith took in the sloppily dressed, dripping man in front of him. He didn’t look much like secret police material… and even if Lovina hadn’t been lying outrageously, he’d taken a self-defense class back in college. He could take him. _He could pay someone to take him_. “Nothing.”   
  
Antonio blinked. “Okay then… we’re leaving now! Have a nice night!” Without waiting for an answer, he rushed back into his car. The stranger looked like he wanted to crush Antonio’s hands again, and since his book wasn’t quite done yet, Antonio really couldn’t afford that.   
  
He was still curious about who the stranger was, and asked as soon as he pulled onto the street. “What was that about?”   
  
Lovina watched the streetlamps speed by, putting distance between her and the sleazeball who had almost ruined her evening. “Nothing.”   
  
Huh. “That’s what he just said.” Now that Antonio thought about it, Lovina hadn’t introduced them. Maybe Antonio had just been rude to her boss! …he really hoped not. Lovina was having a hard time making ends meet, even with overtime. “Who was that?”   
  
“No one.”   
  
Fully recovered from seeing his mother and boss kissing ( _ew_ ), Romano began to whine. “I’m…” He raised his voice when Boss and Mama didn’t pay any attention. “I’m hungry!”   
  
Lovina’s stomach grumbled as her brain remembered the minuscule portions she had been given at the restaurant. Like hell would she go back there; not if she had to pay so much for so little. “…me too.”   
  
Antonio thought about the food still sitting in the oven at home. But then he saw a sign and he knew how he could salvage the evening for the two grumpyhungry Vargases in the back seat. Pulling a sharp left turn, to the serenade of screeching tires and honking, he pulled into the parking lot of an ice cream parlor. He could see an employee mopping up, but the lights were still on and he knew he could be persuasive when he wanted to be. “How about I treat you then? We can take it back to eat with your cake. That’s better than eating it in the store, don’t you think?” Especially since the store was closed. But that was just a little detail.   
  
Romano’s jaw dropped open. “Boss!”   
  
Oh no, the cake was supposed to have been a surprise, wasn’t it… “Shi—ah—I mean, sorry Roma!” Turning the engine off, Antonio turned in his seat. “Promise you didn’t just hear that?”   
  
_Really_. Lovina stroked her son’s hair and smiled. She could play along. “Heard what?”   
  
Antonio could only play along after attending weekend seminars on the rules of the game. “Heard that I just ruined the surprise cake we baked for you.” He hoped she wouldn’t mention that she knew around Roma, he’d put a lot of effort into everything… even in putting batter in Antonio’s shoes, when and why he’d done that Antonio had no clue, but he had and he hadn’t even spilled a drop of it on the floor or around the edges so he must have been trying really hard and Roma was really talented when he did his best, ah—   
  
“ _BOSS!_ ”   
  
Lovina sighed. “…didn’t hear a thing.”   
  
“Perfect! Now what kind of ice cream do you want to be surprised with?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter this time, which I like. It’s easier to write them when they’re shorter. The +2 chapters are because in my initial chapter-planning, I totally forgot about Halloween! I don’t intend to cover other holidays, but Halloween is srs bzns for me kids. The other addition is something just as small and silly enough that I can get it out quickly (and also something I can’t believe I forgot to put in).
> 
> Minimano is not a bad cook; he’s just a very clumsy little boy. Clumsy and unrepentant, which is a dangerous combination around modern kitchen equipment. He’s lucky to have lasted so long without losing a finger.
> 
> Smith: is smug and thinks too much of himself. You might hear from him again (in the past, ooh), but I’m pretty sure he won’t actually be showing up again. I’m getting more confident with these cameo OCs though, so he might.
> 
> “Bastard couldn’t take a hint”: Lovina probably has lots of practice dealing with unwanted attention. Since she’s originally from Italy (have I mentioned how Sweden and I are facial expression buddies? Because if my Sweden face and I got hit on there, she’d definitely be). And /generalization.
> 
> Antonio’s wet shirt: …he was in the shower, remember. That’s why. It’s the only reason. Yessss.


	5. Everyone Hail to the Pumpkin Song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This isn’t Romano’s first Halloween, so why is Antonio getting so worked up?

Romano spent his first Halloween screaming, not that Lovina noticed: Romano spent most of his first few _months_ screaming.   
  
Romano’s second Halloween was his first by most reckonings, because it was the first time Lovina took him, carefully, hand-in-hand ( _for all of half a block, after which he became too tired to walk and she had to carry him_ ), around Antonio’s neighborhood to beg free sweets off kind strangers. Lovina understood the appeal, then, of what seemed an otherwise pointless holiday, mostly because Romano had been too young to eat his own candy. And she couldn’t let it go to waste…   
  
The only differences between Romano’s second Halloween and his third were the number of blocks he was able to walk on his own and the amount of time it took Antonio to say goodbye ( _“Have a good time!... wait you need flashlights, let me get them… bye!... Wait! Lovi are you going to be warm enough like that? And Roma don’t forget that you have to stop walking when the sidewalk ends, and you have my number even though I don’t think I have my number because I think it changed last year, which I found out after I lost it and needed to call it and… Lovi? Have a good time!”_ ).   
  
Romano’s fourth Halloween was different. Antonio was away on a week-long meeting somewhere Romano couldn’t pronounce ( _somewhere that didn’t have ‘no’ in it at all_ ). Lovina and Romano were, therefore, left alone in Antonio’s house, not scared at all and definitely not lonely. Halloween appeared like a ghost through mist and even though Antonio was supposed to be back by the evening of the thirtieth he wasn’t. Romano was not disappointed. He and his mother left on All Hallows’ Eve like they always had, slowly, hand-in-hand, until a thunderstorm pushed them back home, drenched. Romano’s fourth Halloween ended huddled under the blankets in his mother’s room, watching a movie in his mother’s language, by his mother’s side.   
  
By his fifth Halloween, Romano didn’t see what was so good about the dumb holiday anyway.   
  
“You don’t have to do this.”   
  
Everything was dark.   
  
“But I want to!”   
  
Dark and stuffy, and he couldn’t breathe.   
  
“S-so? It’s not like it’s his first Halloween or anything. We’ll be _fine_.”   
  
He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t… “Mama!!”   
  
Pins sticking haphazardly out of his costume, making him look more like an orange pincushion than anything else, Romano began to run. He was tired of waiting for Boss and Mama to realize his hat had fallen over his face and fix it. He wouldn’t have needed anybody’s help, because he was four and he didn’t _ever_ need anyone’s help, except he could barely move his arms in his pumpkin costume. And it was already dark and Mama wasn’t even finished with it, and his hat was over his face and he couldn’t breathe!   
  
When Romano bolted (“ _Roma, what are you—?”_ ), Antonio held out his arms to catch him, but wasn’t quick enough. Romano ran into Antonio’s leg first before falling to the ground. Antonio hoped he wasn’t hurt; his hat ( _sewn to look like the top of a pumpkin with a stalk and everything and ah it was so cute_ ) had even fallen off from the shock of the collision. “Roma are you alright?” He tried to grab one of Romano’s flailing arms so he could pick Romano up again.   
  
Lovina blinked, needle and thread in hand. “Romano, get back here.” She couldn’t let Roma out of the house when he looked like he was wearing a lumpy orange sack of felt. Maybe if she took in a few more corners he would start to look more like a pumpkin ( _or maybe she should have just bought a stupid costume_ )?   
  
After a few harmless smacks to his arms, Antonio was finally able to get Romano off the ground. Romano hadn’t needed the help, but appreciated Antonio’s stupid leg getting the hat off his face. He pulled on Antonio’s hand, shyly, and offered up the most heartfelt thanks he knew. “No.”   
  
Antonio didn’t get it. “Haa… what?”   
  
So Romano, face bunched into a frown, pinched him on the arm and waddled back to his mother.   
  
Antonio, feeling vaguely as though he’d misplaced something, bent down to pick up Romano’s hat and continued to plead his case. “But Lovi I really want to come with you! I missed last year and everything because I was gone!” It had been awful, but he’d had a meeting out of town the week before, and then his flight had been cancelled and he’d been stuck in a hotel room on Halloween… Antonio had called Lovina then, frantically, with instructions to leave a bucket of candy out for the neighborhood children, and to make sure Roma didn’t slip or get hit by a car or almost get hit by a bike like he had the year before. And to have a good time, because that was the most important part.   
  
But this year, this year Antonio had made _certain_ he would be free for Halloween. And he’d made _double_ certain that he’d be there for Roma, because he hadn’t the year before. He’d just forgotten to clear his plans with Lovina first.   
  
Lovina jabbed ineffectually at the orange monstrosity in front of her, and wished she’d taken more sewing classes, or, fuck it all, wished that Feli was around ( _stupid brother who could sew better than she could_ ). In a prime imitation of her son, Lovina puffed out her cheeks and told Antonio to go the fuck away. “No.”   
  
An hour later, Romano slowly stepped down the damp sidewalk hand, in hand, in hand. Because it was easiest to walk when Mama had one of his hands and Boss had the other. The leaves were slippery. And Boss had made sure Romano’s stupid hat hadn’t killed him, and had gotten Mama to surrender her needle and thread, and had promised to let Romano ride on his shoulders whenever Romano got tired. In Romano’s mind, that had made Boss worthy of getting to hold his hand.   
  
In Lovina’s mind, it was fucking annoying that she always seemed to meet men who were better at fulfilling her dreams than she was ( _oh, she’d always wanted to work at a fashion company. Just not in_ Accounting). “Come on Roma, keep up.”   
  
Romano tried to walk faster. “’K.”   
  
Antonio had to bite the side of his cheek to stop himself from shouting in excitement. Maybe Halloween wasn’t that important to Lovi, but it was important to him and he could just _tell_ it was important to Roma too! And he’d double checked that his front door was locked before they’d left, and he’d left the bucket of candy on his front steps and he’d even made sure the sign that said ‘PLEASE JUST TAKE ONE ( _1_ ) :)’ was laminated, because apparently the year before it had rained and one of the neighbor children had thought the entire bucket was for him by mistake.   
  
It always paid off to be prepared for Halloween, and, as Antonio watched his neighborhood rise from the dead, as he watched little ghouls and princesses and lady knights and robots and every wonderful thing an imagination could dream up ( _including a small child dressed up as a cardboard box, look over there Roma that’s creative too!_ ), he felt a thrill he hadn’t felt since he’d last gone trick-or-treating.   
  
That had been before his last sibling had moved away. It had been a long time.   
  
Antonio chanced a look down. Romano was still doggedly walking on his own, one foot in front of the other. Antonio thought about telling him that he’d walked a whole **two** blocks by himself, but didn’t want to ruin the surprise.   
  
He chanced a look up. Lovina’s cheeks were red. She was probably cold, and Antonio was struck by the stray vision of her in a costume that matched Roma’s. Because Roma’s costume, which Antonio had taken upon himself to finish because it had looked like Lovi had been having trouble, was stuffed with warm cotton to make it full and round like a pumpkin should be. Not because Romano’s costume was only a few feet tall, from top to bottom, and would barely cover Lovina’s body and if it somehow managed to grow would still show off her legs very nicely—no. No. That, Antonio told himself strongly as he shifted his gaze forward, was only _part_ of the reason.   
  
…he really needed to get out more.   
  
“Antonio?”   
  
He laughed nervously. “Y-yeah?”   
  
Lovina wasn’t going to even _bother_ wondering why Antonio was acting like more of an idiot than usual. He’d made some off-handed comment, before they’d left the house, about her dressing to match her son: Lovina still hadn’t forgiven him ( _of all the costumes he could imagine her in… a big round unflattering pumpkin? Really?_ ). “Roma wants to stop here.” And I’d like to hit you with the flashlight now, but I won’t because it would set a bad example and I don’t want to make you angry because you collect my rent. Really? A pumpkin?   
  
Romano let go of both Boss and his Mama’s hands when all they did was stand at the foot of the long driveway and stare at each other. He wanted his candy and he wanted it _now_ , before the rain could come, or the scary thunder, or before Mama could eat it all. He let go of Boss’s hand first. Then Mama’s. Neither noticed, but Romano didn’t care and this time for real. Instead he put one foot in front of the other, and walked.   
  
Lovina noticed her son was missing by the time he was halfway up the steep driveway. Visions of Romano screaming the entire way back home after tripping and scraping his forehead or his leg or his arm rolled through her head. She stepped forward to pick up her son and ( _get Antonio to_ ) carry him to the door. And was stopped.   
  
At some point Antonio must have also noticed Roma’s independent waddle up the path, because he already had his camera in-hand and powered-on when he pulled Lovina back by her waist. “Shhh… This is Romano’s first trick-or-treating by _himself_!”   
  
Even though she felt ridiculous, Lovina remained silent, next to Antonio, on the edge of the street. She drew the line at watching Romano on the camera’s tiny screen, though, because goddammit her son was there in real life, only a handful of meters away. When Roma began kicking on the bottom of the door ( _he didn’t even fall over afterwards and she was a little a lot proud of him_ ), Antonio’s hand holding his camera began to shake. Lovina had never seen anyone other than her brother actually tremble in excitement before, but she wasn’t surprised that Antonio did it too.   
  
And since she was feeling gracious, she took her hand out of her coat pocket and used it to steady the camera instead of grabbing it away from Antonio completely. Romano couldn’t remember his ( _not quite_ ) first Halloween with a shit-quality recording. Not on her watch.   
  
Lovina snuck a look up at Antonio from the corner of her eye: he was watching the screen of his camera intently. Resisting the urge to smack him, she lightly stepped on his foot with every ounce of force she could muster. To his credit, he didn’t scream. But he did look up, and that was enough, because at that moment the woman at the door ( _she looked familiar, Lovina could swear she’d seen her at the store once or twice_ ) dropped one—two—three! pieces of candy into Roma’s light yellow pillowcase.   
  
It was a picture perfect scene.   
  
“ROMA DON’T FORGET TO SAY THANK YOU!”   
  
Until Antonio had to go and ruin the video by shouting at the top of his lungs and taking his other arm away from her waist to wave about like an idiot.   
  
Startled by Antonio’s shout, Romano fell over. And began to roll. “ **Mama!** ”   
  
Lovina tried to run towards Romano to stop him before he rolled into the road. At the same time, Antonio tried to tackle Romano to stop him before he rolled into the road. Naturally, he accidentally took Lovina down with him. Romano didn’t quite understand why Mama and Boss and he were all lying down and hugging on the grass in front of somebody else’s house, but he had his candy, and he’d stopped rolling before he’d gotten sick, so he didn’t mind.   
  
Romano’s fifth Halloween was warm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Halloween! (BOO!)
> 
> Some things:
> 
> Why Antonio would love Halloween? Legit reason to give candy to small children. :D  
> Why Femano would love Halloween? Free candy.  
> Why Minimano would love Halloween? “” + people paying loads of attention to him.
> 
> “a big round unflattering pumpkin:” a tribute to 1) that prompt way back on the kink meme for Spain chubby-chasing Femano, and 2) they make ‘sexy’ versions of any costume these days. It’s not safe to try and find a reference for a Halloween costume on the internet, as a friend and I found out last week. Not even when you want to dress up as a fish.
> 
> Interesting Fact #223H: yours truly can recite most of the soundtrack to The Nightmare Before Christmas from memory. Sometimes there are notes in there, but not often. Therefore recite, not sing.


	6. After the Ball is Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mother and child definitely do not wait for Cinderella to return home. Which is good, because Antonio was always more of an Esmeralda.

Antonio walked out the door twenty minutes early the first time. Five seconds later he walked right back in, unhurried, because even though he had a hard time seeing without his glasses, and despite the fact he was legally obligated to wear them while driving ( _and contractually obligated to wear them while writing_ ), he still managed to forget they weren’t on his face about half of the times he stepped outside. Lovina had no idea how he did it; she’d seen him prove himself before. He wasn’t stupid.   
  
“Something doesn’t feel right.”   
  
He wasn’t _entirely_ stupid.   
  
“I can’t place it, but something definitely doesn’t feel right.”   
  
What an idiot. From her spot in the doorway, Lovina balanced the box in her arms on one hip. With her newly freed hand she pointed at Antonio’s dresser. “You left your glasses there.” But before she could turn to leave, he called her back.   
  
“I don’t see them,” Antonio swept his hands out over the surface in front of him. He toppled a picture and several other knickknacks, but didn’t feel the distinctive shape of his wire frames. He didn’t really know why he would. “Are you sure it’s that?” Antonio lifted a hand to adjust his glasses ( _they must have slipped_ ) and ended up scratching the side of his head. Oh. He sighed. “But I don’t feel them either.”   
  
Lovina watched him stumble around his room for a little longer before she escaped back into the hallway. She needed to finish bringing boxes up before Romano wanted to go to bed. Roma was wary of new places; he wouldn’t be able to sleep without her near him, and as much of a pain as that was, Lovina didn’t mind. Not many people needed her. On her next pass through the hallway, however, Lovina realized that while Antonio might not need _her_ , he certainly needed some _sense_.   
  
“Let me do that.”   
  
“Hmm?” He had found his glasses by then, even though they’d been in front of his stupid face the entire time. But instead of putting them on and leaving he’d only stood there, squinting in his tux, entirely out of place in the laid-back sprawl of his room.   
  
A few steps away from where he stood, Lovina caught herself. Perhaps Antonio was an idiot, a friendly idiot, but she knew her boundaries. She thought she’d learned her boundaries, after all this time. “Never mind.” She took a step back. “Are you going to put them on?”   
  
He shook his head. “They aren’t the right ones.”   
  
What was he… she took another look and yes, of course, a sleek pair of stylish frames sat in Antonio’s hand. The pair his editor had urged him to buy, after Antonio’s picture had started to run next to his columns as well, the pair that Antonio hated with a passion, the pair he refused to wear. He was even worse than Romano sometimes, and Romano was a prodigy when it came to dragging his heels when he didn’t want to do something. Lovina didn’t know how she put up with the both of them at once; a childhood with Feliciano probably helped. “Do you have time to search for your other pair?”   
  
He glanced at her hopefully, expectantly, shakily ( _which blob was she?_ ). “…no?”   
  
Lovina rolled her eyes and turned away. Antonio was too much like Romano for his own good; Lovina expected Romano to want her to do all the work. She was his mother. She was not _Antonio’s_ mother. “I’ll be downstairs.”   
  
“Wait.” She did, but only because the thought of dragging more boxes out of the basement was not her idea of a fun Friday night. Like hell. “Can you check my tie?”   
  
Back in Italy, back at home, it had taken Feliciano twenty years to get used to his sister nitpicking his appearance, if only because he’d always stubbornly insisted he knew what he was doing ( _and because he found her mode of criticism slightly frightening_ ). It had taken Antonio less than a year to decide that he didn’t mind the critique. After only three years, he had somehow managed to turn his renter into a part-time fashion consultant ( _“What about this shirt?” “Are you **joking** ” “Lovina? …are you good with bow ties?” “How did they let you live on your own…”_).   
  
While Antonio stood in front of her, smiling and asking for help, it was rather flattering.   
  
After the fact, though, Lovina could never shake the light feeling that he’d gotten her to do more work than she had to.   
  
“You got it right on your own.” And, for once, he had.   
  
“Fantastic!”   
  
She escaped into the hallway before he could ask anything else of her. The damn man wore his suits too well. It impaired her judgment.   
  
Several trips to and from the basement later, Lovina noticed she couldn’t hear anyone else in the house; Antonio must have finally left. Had he really given up so easily on his glasses? Strange. He couldn’t have found them, no, she would have heard his victory cries if he had found them. But it didn’t matter. Finally she had some peace.   
  
And quiet.   
  
Quiet… “Roma? Roma where are you?”   
  
Quiet was a fantasy when something had tickled Romano the wrong way. Antonio rushing off for the night without telling him a story? Romano might sulk for days if she didn’t find him soon.   
  
“Roma?”   
  
Lovina peeked into Antonio’s bedroom, but only because he’d left the door ajar, she wasn’t nosy. Nothing looked broken in the darkness. She moved on as quickly as she could, checking all the unlocked doors down the hallway until she came to her own room. Four toppled boxes of videos and books greeted her inside, as did a grumpy little lump in the middle of her bed. “Romano, what do you think you’re doing?”   
  
The lump of ‘blankets’ shuddered. “No!”   
  
“Did you make this mess?”   
  
The lump of ‘blankets’ hiccuped. “No.”   
  
She took a deep breath, and spoke in the soft, collected voice that used to make the neighbor boys run for their mothers. “Romano, _clean this up_.”   
  
A chilly moment later, the lump of ‘blankets’ dissolved into a little boy. Ignoring the magical feat her voice had performed on the linens, Lovina pointed to the spilled tapes and scowled. Romano scowled back, but red cheeks and a runny nose watered down the gravity of his look. “Mama…”   
  
“I don’t care if you don’t want to.” She waited. “ _Now_ , Romano.”   
  
He crawled down from the mattress, a blanket cape in tow, and slouched over to her feet. With his left hand he held his cape together. With his right, he picked up her old copy of _Pane, amore e fantasia_ by one corner and dropped it into an empty box. He cringed at the clatter. One long look from his mother later, Romano recovered, huffed, and began to pick up more movie cases. He set them one by one into the box until it was full.   
  
That only left three boxes worth of mess. Wonderful. “You can get the rest later, Roma. Mama’s tired.” And she was, even though it was only eight in the evening. She hadn’t even eaten yet. She wondered what Antonio, at his stupid fancy party, with his stupid fancy clothes and fancy date, was eating.   
  
Thinking of things she didn’t have made her eyes feel all the more heavy.   
  
“…no.” Romano pointed to the bed.   
  
It was early, but still so tempting… “Maybe quickly.”   
  
Romano clambered back up onto the bed, stole the entire middle section, both pillows and most of the blankets, and pulled a soggy Tomato somewhere out of the pile. He cradled the toy to his chest and for once Lovina didn’t panic about the mess, or the damp spot in the middle of her bed the squirrel had made. Instead she took off her sweater and lay back next to her son.   
  
“Aren’t you hungry, Roma?” She yawned.   
  
A little. “No.”   
  
Lovina let her breathing deepen. “I’ll make something… in a few minutes… just a few…”   
  
Romano, with good reason, didn’t believe her. But sometimes, only once in a while, some things were more important than food. Now was one of those times, because even though Boss had _promised_ , he hadn’t even said _goodbye_ , and Romano didn’t _care_ , except how was he supposed to get to _sleep_ without a story? It wasn’t his fault the people around him were always letting him down. Boss was an idiot. “…woma.”   
  
“Not now.” Lovina rolled over. “Mama is very tired.”   
  
“…b-but I…” a wet bushy tail pressed against the back of her neck. “…I want…”   
  
And Mama couldn’t say no to that. “Only one.” The tail retreated, and Lovina dredged up a handful of memories she rarely ever visited anymore. “C'era una volta…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So at first it was priorities and time issues. But then, once I started trying to pick this chapter up again, I couldn’t. I mean, I tried, but the words sounded boring. And then I realized that I was in the wrong Spain Mode, and couldn’t jam my brain back to the Nice Guy Setting. So. Summary? Writer’s block is a bitch.
> 
> After the Ball: I confess I just like the tune of the song (rockin’ it 1890s style). And there was a ball type thing mentioned in this. The lyrics don’t have much to do with this chapter. Much.
> 
> Roma was wary of new places: ‘wait I don’t get it???’ = GOOD >B} This will be explained a little later. Just go with it and try and think about what it means.
> 
> Pane, amore e fantasia: a movie I have never seen before and hadn’t heard of before tonight. Picked because it sounds like it could be an alright comfort movie. Like if I went to Italy, got all homesick and started watching Star Wars or something to revel in the Americanness for a bit. Also because it has the word ‘bread’ in the title, and the main character’s name is Antonio, because I am easy like that. Mmmmm, bread.
> 
> wet squirrel: tears, man. Tears.
> 
> C'era una volta: Once upon a time. But in Italian. Femano ain’t bringing her baby up with shitty English fairytales, fuck that. And 15 years later, minimano better damn well be thankful after he gets scholarships for being effectively trilingual (although he really isn’t that great with Spanish, he uses his Italian to cheat and guess). Although who knows if that alone would get you a scholarship anymore. Also: the hell is all this au headcanon coming from?
> 
> Double Also: originally this was supposed to have an ‘AND ANTONIO DOESN’T COME HOME THAT NIGHT OOOOOHHHH ANGST’ ending, but it felt weird tacked on and I figured ending with a beginning was nicer, if a little abrupt. As for Antonio’s ‘fancy date’… guess and if you’re right, I’ll tell you so!
> 
> Triple Also: This fic, like my others, is neither dead, nor forgotten, nor abandoned. It might feel like that sometimes, but that’s only because I apparently used up all my Quick Writer points on the heist fill. Silly self, why’d you go and do that? (2016 UPLOAD: YEAH YOU SHOULD PROBABLY CONSIDER EVERYTHING DEAD UNLESS IT RISES UP FROM THE GROUND DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF YOU)


	7. Not Far from the Tree

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not Far from the Tree

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, the all caps sections used to be white text on lj. Perhaps someday I'll figure out how to get it to stick here.

TO BE 100% CLEAR, THIS IS A GAG CHAPTER. IT IS STILL CHAPTER 6. BUT IT IS A JOKE.  
HAPPY APRIL! 

Antonio craned his neck upwards. He hadn’t heard any muffled ‘no’s in a few minutes, and some cautious crows had even returned to the tree. “Romano? Are you alright up there?” The leaves shifted in the breeze and Antonio wondered if it would be better to start climbing up after Romano, or to stand underneath the tree and hope Romano could pick where he fell. BAD PARENTING BITCH. BAD PARENTING.  
  
A branch wriggled. “No!” THE BRANCH DIDN’T SAY THAT, BTW. ROMANO DID. BUT IT COULDA IF IT’D WANTED TO.  
  
Antonio set his foot on the bark and tested his weight. “Don’t panic Roma, Boss is going to be up there soon! And if you panic you might fall, and if Boss isn’t there for you to fall on then you might break your—”  
  
A branch wriggled. BECAUSE IT’S ALIVEEEEEEEEEE  
  
It bent. BECAUSE IT’S DANCING????  
  
And it broke.  
THE DRAMA!  
Romano screamed. LIKE A LITTLE BOY. IF HE HAD SCREAMED LIKE A SQUIRREL, THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN CAUSE FOR CONCERN. …HE SCREAMED LIKE A SQUIRREL.  
Two thoughts ran through Antonio’s mind. ‘Maybe I should head towards the one on the lower left’ lead the way, because it had left the gate first and because Antonio hadn’t yet registered what the broken branch meant. ‘Don’t yell in the house, Roma’ came a close second, because Antonio thought quickly enough and because he hadn’t wanted to register what the scream meant.  
  
Three things happened before Antonio’s legs began to move towards where Romano had fallen. 1\. ROMANO WET HIMSELF. 2. THE PLOT THICKENED. 3. SPAIN THOUGHT ABOUT COWS  
A different, deeper voice yelped. “Holy fuck!” GUESS WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO  
  
A smaller, scared voice cried. “…Ahhhhh!” GUESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS  
  
_THUMP_ THE DRAMA!  
  
Antonio ran around the side of the tree, sloppily, too fast, slipped a little, and in a heartbeat realized that if Romano had been hurt, Antonio would burn the tree down himself which was really odd, because the tree hadn’t exactly done anything, Roma was awfully clumsy, but Antonio had this urge to set something on fire, or chop it down, or punch it into woodchips, or something else really bad to trees, not hug them at all, maybe turn them into low-grade confetti, pour acid rain on their ground near their roots. WHAT THE FUCK IS ALL THIS BABBLE. CAPSLOCK GRRARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.  
“Get the hell off me, kid.”  
  
Those were Antonio’s thoughts exactly, except for wanting Romano to get off the stranger, he wanted the stranger to stop swearing around Roma, because frankly Roma didn’t need the encouragement. “Romano!”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Wha?” THE DRAMAAAAAAAAAAAA  
  
Antonio blinked. “Roma?”  
  
The stranger stood, rubbing his chest, and let Romano fall off of him into the dirt. “Aright, you _stalker_ , I don’t care how you learned about that, but if you call me that again I’m gonna rearrange your face.” He narrowed his eyes at Romano. “I might let your heavy kid turn around when you cry.” >:{ )  
  
Romano, eyes large and legs shaking from his fall, punched the stranger in the leg. “Woma!” THAT LITTLE BASTARD  
  
“F-fuck!” The stranger cringed. “Keep your demon child on a leash in public, why don’t you?” THIS IS SUPER HILARIOUS TO ME, BTW  
“Hey…” Antonio didn’t know what had angered the stranger so much ( _it was such a nice day out!_ ), but taking it out on Romano, who had just gone through something really scary, was unacceptable. “You really shouldn’t—” He stopped at a swift punch to his knee. “Romano?”  
  
He’d just fallen from a tree the size of the tallest thing ever, had hit a bunch of scary grabbing branches, had survived by landing on the uncomfortable stomach of the angriest, meanest grownup he had ever met, and all Boss had had to say was ‘hey’? “Boss, y-you…” BASTARD DAMMIT CHIGIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII S-SOB I HAVE ISSUES CHIGI  
  
It only took Antonio a few seconds to get used to the light pummeling feeling, and once he did, he grabbed Romano under the arms and lifted him up. He brought Romano close to his face, checked for any obvious bruises or storming tantrum tears, and made sure to watch out for little fists. Romano sniffled. BUT ONLY BECAUSE I COULDN’T GET A GOOD WORD FOR THE SNORTING IN OF A HUGE GLOB OF KIDSNOT  
“What’s going on here?” DRAMAAAAAAAAA  
  
Assured that Romano hadn’t sustained any real damage, Antonio began his favorite form of physical cheer-up charm: the common hug! While he and Romano were otherwise occupied, someone else sustained real damage. YEAH THAT LINE WAS AWKWARD  
“How _dare_ you.”  YOU RAT BASTARD  
  
“Y-you?!” WELL SHIT  
  
“How **_fucking_** _dare_ you.”  THE DRRRRAAAAMMMAAAAAAAAAA  
  
Lovina swung her purse with all the force she could. …OKAY SO THAT’S NOT SO MUCH  
  
Romano met the dirt for the second time in five minutes.  
DUH NUH NUH NUH DUH NUH NUH NUH  
DRAMA! OR BATMAN. BUT SUPERMAN INSTEAD!  
AND NOW BACK TO DAYS OF OUR ~~THREESOMES~~ ROMANOS  
Romano clung to his Boss’s side ( _because Boss was a wimp and was probably even more scared of the stranger_ ). On the bench on the other side of the running track, Romano held his head and swore under his breath. CONFUSION IS GO! IT IS SUPER EFFECTIVE??  
Pacing back and forth in the middle of the path, Lovina muttered. Mostly to herself, partially to her son, and the teeniest tiniest bit to her ex-husband. “…you fucker, I told you I never wanted to see you again, how _dare_ you come back, Roma don’t look at him, Antonio _shut up_ , you fucking—”  
  
“Look.” Romano rubbed at his temples. “Unlike that freak, I’m not a stalker. I didn’t know you were going to be here; if I had, I would have turned around and started running.”  
  
Lovina sneered. “Just like you.” DEMS FIGHTIN WORDS  
  
“Bitch.” BITCH PLEASE  
  
“Look who’s talking.” OH SNAP  
  
Antonio raised his left hand, slightly, as far as he could with Romano’s weight pinning it down. “So you’re Romano as well?”  
  
Romano glared at the smiling, stalkerish moron. “Yes. That is my name, and if you don’t mind, maybe you should run along somewhere else. These are… personal matters.” DRAMA   
  
“Stalker?” Antonio didn’t get it. “Why do you have the same name as Roma?” He pat Romano on the head. The Romano next to him swatted his hand away. The Romano across from him started to roll his eyes, stopped, and fixed his eyes on Lovina.  
  
“You mean—?” YOU CLONED ME???  
  
“…it doesn’t mean anything.” YES!!!!!! AND I FEEL NO SHAME!  
  
Romano stood. Across the path, Romano tried to hide underneath Antonio’s jacket. “I’d say it fucking _means something_.” He caught Lovina’s arm. Her other hand bunched into a fist. “Why didn’t you ever tell me what you named him?”  HOW COULD YOU I’M BETTER THAN SOME DAMN CLONE  
  
She hit him exactly where Romano had fallen. “…what would it matter. You were already gone by that point.” BITCH YOU CAN’T HANDLE THIS DRAMA  
“Fuck, you bitch! That’s still…” he put his hands on her shoulders. “I deserved to know. Why the hell would you even name him after me after I. You know. After I left.” BUT I STILL WUVVVVV YOUUUUU  
  
They started crying at the same time.  
AND THEN ANTONIO BROUGHT MINIMANO TO DAYCARE   
AND AFTER THAT, ALL THE ADULTS HAD KINKY SEX. AND THEN DINNER. 

THIS IS THE END OF THE COMMENTARY BYEEEEEEEEEEEEE AND HAVE A GOOD APRIL! 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The more Romanos the merrier. Actually, maybe merrier isn’t the most accurate word to use. The more Romanos, the better? Plus, the mindfuck of Romano is Romano’s son twice was too beautiful to pass up. Anyways, hope you like the update, even though it was short. I don’t think I’ll have much time to write from now on. I’ll try to get to this once a month? I’m also contemplating focusing on finishing up Ricette before doing anything else. Oh, and this was dashed off very quickly; please tell me if you find any big errors. This paragraph’s not a joke btw.
> 
> Also: to note, it was almost still the first when I finished this. Stupid homework due on a Saturday. :( APRIL FOOL’S MWAHAHAHAHA >:D >:D
> 
> Double also: you may want to highlight the entire page for more clarification. OH HO HO


	8. Meet Tomato the Squirrel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some boys have dogs. Some boys have imaginary friends. Other boys have squirrels.

They stared at each other, not quite in silence. Romano gurgled while he chewed on the edge of his light pink towel; Antonio exhaled softly as the bundle in his arms squirmed. It wasn’t quite silence but it was close, closer than Antonio had had the joy of experiencing in weeks. Romano was nearing his first birthday but he still had trouble making it through the night without waking up. It reminded Antonio of when his brothers and sisters had still lived with him.  
  
It reminded Antonio that he’d been sitting down for four hours already, that he hadn’t eaten lunch yet and that his legs were beginning to cramp. “Shhhh, little Roma, Uncle An-to-ni-o needs to stand up, is that okay?”  
  
Five minutes later the screams subsided.  
  
Antonio tried again.   
  
Ten minutes after that he decided to hell with it and stood anyway.  
  
He knew better than to walk over to the pale green crib he had pulled out of some corner of his attic. Lovina hadn’t had many possessions with her when she had moved in, and so Antonio had volunteered the remnants of his childhood that weren’t being used. Romano didn’t know the difference. …Except for when he knew he was being cheated out of his time in someone’s arms. Then Romano would shout out as much and as loud as he could, his favorite word no less, and Antonio would have to make sure all his neighbors knew he wasn’t killing anybody.  
  
“You need a friend, Roma.” As much as Antonio loved children and as adorable as Romano could be when he wasn’t screaming himself hoarse, Antonio was too old to be Romano’s friend. He was an authority figure. A caretaker. A boss! And while most men had bosses whether they wanted to or not, every man _needed_ a best friend. Even when that man was a ripe eleven months old. “You know I already had Carlos when I was your age?”  
  
Antonio and Carlos the Toy Horse had been inseparable from the very beginning, which had much to do with the day a young Antonio had fallen asleep and gotten a bit of the yarn from Carlos’s mane lodged in his windpipe. Beyond the agonizing bonding experience that was the Emergency Room, Carlos had been there for Antonio when Antonio had needed someone to talk to, or play with, or hold when he was scared and his parents were busy shouting at each other. Romano didn’t have a Carlos; the best Romano had was the pink towel Lovina always let him chew on.  
  
“…Woma?”  
  
“That’s right,” Antonio felt his annoyance fade away, “Woma needs a friend! And then maybe he won’t be so upset when he wakes up in the middle of Uncle Antonio’s sleeping time, because his friend will be there to keep him safe.” Safe, and warm, and happy, and… “But we’ll make sure there’s nothing you can hurt yourself on first. The hospital’s probably still too scary for you.”  
  
Romano scrunched closer to the cloth that smelled like a cross between his Mama and mushy carrots. He didn’t know what the loud man wanted or why he kept showing his teeth. “Mama.”  
  
Antonio shook out his legs and hoped he had enough bread left in his pantry. “Of course! We’ll ask your Mama when she gets back home.”  
  
Lovina expected to see her living room lights on when she opened the basement side door. She expected to see Antonio sitting on her floor, attempting to get Romano to say anything remotely close to An-to-ni-o. She didn’t expect the room to be dark and empty; that was new. “Romano?”  
  
No one screamed in response, or laughed, or told her “no”.  
  
That was worrying.  
  
“Antonio?”  
  
A muffled shout followed. “We’re upstairs!”  
  
“Romano needs his dinner now, and…” Lovina lightly scolded as she climbed the basement stairs, but allowed her voice to trail off once she reached the landing. She leaned against the basement door and raised an eyebrow. “And what are you doing?” She tried to keep her voice balanced at eighty-nine percent polite inquiry and eleven percent ‘what the hell is going on here?’ The result sounded distinctly flipped.  
  
Antonio set down the plastic spoon shaped like a fire truck and wiped the spat out oatmeal off of his forehead. He watched Romano out of the corner of his eye, just in case he tried to jump out of Antonio’s arms again in search of… in search of whatever “no” was supposed to be. “Roma was hungry.”  
  
Lovina felt her lips purse together unattractively. She corrected her expression but couldn’t wipe away the feeling. She didn’t need Antonio telling her what to do. What Romano needed. How to raise her _own damn son_. “I’m here now, so…” So _buzz off_.  
  
“You’ve got the best timing!”  
  
Her thoughts broke apart and reformed into something new. It was hard to stay angry at him, she was learning, when he was always so lighthearted. “I-I what?”  
  
“Roma and I,” Antonio picked up one of Romano’s fists and waved with it. Romano struggled to return to his bottle in peace. Unfortunately, Antonio was several decades stronger. “We were talking earlier…”  
  


* * *

  
  
Several years later, Antonio did not _exactly_ regret planting the seeds of friendship in Romano’s mind. He didn’t regret pushing Lovina to buy her son a proper toy. And he regretted least of all that that toy had eventually turned out to be a dusty-looking squirrel, soon to be unanimously named Tomato, purchased from a secondhand store just before closing time. He might have regretted not taking Francis’s advice and sitting Romano down for a man-to-man talk about how lying made little birds lose their mothers. Just a little, and only on those afternoons when he woke up from a very calm nap to a sharp, recognizable smell and the bark of “No!” in his ear.  
  
Antonio slowly, grudgingly, opened his eyes and looked over to the mess of soggy blankets Romano was pointing to. A ragged brown squirrel had been artistically placed in the center of the largest yellow splotch.  
  
“Romano…”  
  
The finger jabbed out again, pointing straight toward the squirrel as if to say ‘I have found the perpetrator! Lock him away and give me his lunch!’  
  
“ _Romano…_ ” Antonio sat up and readjusted his glasses. There went another couch cushion… maybe he should put plastic bags on them?   
  
“Woma,” refused to make eye contact.  
  
“Now Roma, tell the truth.” Antonio put his hands on his hips and frowned. “Tomato couldn’t have done that because Tomato isn’t rea—,” Antonio stopped, remembered a far-off whinny only he had been able to hear, and chose his words carefully. “Tomato didn’t make that mess. He hasn’t had anything to drink in a long time!” There. Now Romano would have to take the blame for his own accidents _and_ he wouldn’t get upset! Antonio felt a little rush of pride; he was even better at taking care of children than he remembered.  
  
The rush slowed to a trickle when Romano padded over on sticky feet towards the couch Antonio was contemplating replacing altogether, picked up Tomato and ran back to Antonio. He held out his best friend at arm’s length and when Antonio held his breath and took a closer look he noticed something. A dark purple ring of something all along Tomato’s muzzle.  
  
“Roma?”  
  
“…no?”  
  
“Has Tomato…” Antonio remembered to choose his words carefully, even though he had a good idea of what he was about to find in his kitchen. “Has Tomato been drinking lately?”  
  
Romano nodded.  
  
“Was he drinking the juice we bought this morning for your snack this afternoon?”  
  
Romano nodded.  
  
“Did he drink so much that he got full and had an… an accident?”  
  
Romano nodded faster. At last; Boss was ~~buying~~ getting it! Tomato had been really thirsty, and even though Romano had told him to wait for snack and not to be so greedy, Tomato had guzzled down the entire bottle. Without even sharing or anything! He’d made a mess in the kitchen and then he’d made a mess all over Romano’s clothes and the couch… and now he was going to _get_ it. Boss looked really angry.  
  
Boss was.  
  
“Lying is _wrong_ Romano.” Antonio looked back and forth between the boy and the squirrel. He began to notice more little, ( _not terribly_ ) subtle details. Like the grape juice footprints trailing across the white living room carpet from the kitchen. Like the small pile of neglected plastic cups in the foyer. Like the splash of purple staining Romano’s face and shirt.  
  
“Ba!”  
  
“Don’t ‘Boss’ me, Romano. No dess—,” Antonio remembered that the Vargases had been eating in their basement more often than not lately, and that he could hardly restrict Romano’s dessert anyway. “No snack today! For you _or_ Tomato. Instead you’re going to help Boss clean up _your_ mess. And you’re going to tell your Mama about it when she comes home.”  
  
Romano tried to protest, but found his throat too tight to speak. He tried to push Boss away, but soon found himself scooped up into angry arms. He struggled all the way to the Closet Full of Cleaning Things Romano Isn’t Allowed to Touch, he cried in the garage, where Boss filled a bucket full of water, and he seethed all the way back into the kitchen.  
  
Boss was _stupid_ and Romano _hated_ him. And maybe he couldn’t say that yet, exactly, but he would make sure Boss knew. Romano stomped and kicked and threw Tomato into a lamp ( _although he felt bad about that as soon as it happened and promised to apologize as soon as Boss went away_ ). He grew a little more tired and a little more uncomfortable with his itchysticky pants as the minutes went by.  
  
By the time Antonio had finished cleaning all the messes Romano had made, Romano’s tantrum had wound down into a sniffling lemon-scented puddle of sadness in the middle of the living room floor. Antonio sighed and carefully picked up boy and squirrel. They had had enough of a punishment for one afternoon; when Lovina got back in the evening she could decide what happened next.  
  
“Romano?”  
  
He hiccuped.  
  
“Roma, say something?”  
  
He buried his face in Antonio’s sweater and mumbled something that felt a little like spit and a little like nonsense. Antonio decided a retreat was the most strategic thing to do, and headed straight for his bathroom. Now that the rooms were cleaned, it was time for everyone else to be clean as well.  
  
Not even the warm bathwater, soft foamy bubbles on top, washed the scowl from Romano’s face. Antonio didn’t know what to do. “Romano, you can’t be mad at me.”  
  
Showed what _Boss_ knew.  
  
“What if Tomato joins you in the tub?” Antonio held the squirrel towards Romano and smiled. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You do both need a lot of scrubbing…”  
  
“N-n-no!” Romano swatted Tomato away.  
  
The first time Tomato had joined Romano for a bath, Romano had screamed until Mama had zipped Tomato safely into a plastic bag: Tomato couldn’t swim! Romano didn’t know why Mama and Boss continued trying to put Tomato in the bath without his bag when Tomato made it abundantly clear that he didn’t like the water. The one time the plastic bag had accidentally popped ( _“Romano, don’t shake Tomato so hard, you’ll break the—” “Ahhhhhhhh!”_ ), Tomato had almost **drowned**. He’d gotten _moldy_. Tomato didn’t like baths unless he was safe, and Boss was trying to force him into the tub with Romano and Romano had to protect him or else.  
  
 _PLOP_  
  
Romano swatted Tomato away, and Tomato landed directly headfirst in the warm, bubbly water.  
  


* * *

  
  
The front door opened.  
  
“Romano?” The door closed, quickly. “Antonio?” It sounded like someone was being killed upstairs and Lovina knew that probably meant Romano had had a bad day.  
  
Antonio sighed in relief and shouted back over Romano’s cries. “We’re upstairs!”  
  
When Lovina finally appeared in the doorway to Antonio’s bathroom she had already bitten back her sarcasm ( _“No, **really?** ”_). “Did something happen?” She set her purse down on a stack of towels and rubbed her temples with her left hand. “Did you do something again, Romano? _Apologize_ to Antonio, for whatever it was. He doesn’t have to be as nice to you as he is. You don’t want to make him angry.” And Lovina didn’t want him to have a bad opinion of their— _her_ family.  
  
She opened her eyes.  
  
Romano stared at her, red eyes barely dry, clutching a soggy Tomato to his chest.  
  
Antonio stared at her too, although he hadn’t been crying and his little added wave made it clear that he wasn’t anywhere near as upset as Romano was, even though he was fully clothed and sitting, soaked, in the bathtub, foam in his hair.  
  
“…what?”  
  
Antonio laughed. “Romano and I had a little tug of war,” which Antonio had been distinctly annoyed during, although now that it was all over and done with Antonio found that he just wanted a good chuckle and maybe something to blow bubbles with. “I think I lost.”  
  
Lovina had the bad feeling that whatever it was that made Antonio _Antonio_ was rubbing off on her son when Romano nodded and mouthed the word ‘lost’ to her. “I see…”  
  
She didn’t. But she grabbed two warm towels from the pile next to the sink anyway and walked over to give Antonio a hand. Perhaps he was ridiculous at times, but it was an endearing ridiculous. And the closer she was, the better she could see how the water made his shirt cling to his chest ( _if only those damn bubbles would dissolve…_ ). Not that she was looking at him.  
  
In her pointed Not Looking At Him, Lovina missed the way Antonio looked at _her_.  
  
She also missed the glance he exchanged with her son.  
  
So, really, the shriek she made when they pulled her into the tub with them was entirely merited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: Here’s May’s update! Which means June’s probably won’t be until the middle-end of the month but it’ll come none the less. Oh! And to be 110% clear, because I don’t think I was before: chapter 6 was a gag chapter, meant for April Fool’s. It didn’t happen. So you still don’t know who Romano’s father is. Yet. But I think I’m going to have another interlude or two with that same gag storyline because I liked it. And because when wouldn’t I want to write a Romano+femRomano = miniRomano storyline come on, I’m me.
> 
> Also: I hereby dedicate this chapter to frenchfrogs and chromatic_coma. Because they pestered me to get on with the update and gave me inspiration for it. I hope I’m embarrassing them right now.
> 
> Also inspired by the recent pics of Spain and Romano that are too goddamn buhyoo for their own goddamn good.
> 
> Double Also: I am a huge Calvin and Hobbes fan. Can you tell?
> 
> Triple Also: it’s been a while since I said it, so I’ll restate it. Concrit = ♥


	9. Stormy Weather

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s like the blanket scenario but wetter. Or: how the Vargases finally move upstairs.

The radio had anticipated a bit of wind and a smattering of rain. By nine o’clock that night, Romano had finally stopped crying after the tree branch had slammed against the basement door two hours earlier. Lovina had whispered to him, had sung for him, had held him with all the patience she didn’t know she had; and it had paid off. He stopped crying around nine and it wasn’t even because he had fallen asleep. It was because he wasn’t scared anymore. It was still raining, and thundering, and cold, and horrible, but Romano wasn’t scared.  
  
Lovina should have known it was too good to last.  
  
But, she was slightly preoccupied.  
  
Lovina Did Not Like Storms.  
  
She wasn’t _afraid_ , like some little boy attempting to hide under his mother’s pillow ( _“Roma, please, come out of there, you have your own bed”_ ). Lovina was a reasonable adult. She wasn’t immature or pathetic. Feliciano was pathetic, and even he didn’t flinch when lightning crackled over him. Antonio didn’t bat an eye at thunder. Lovina wasn’t scared.  
  
Lovina was merely so in tune with her own, trembling child, that she was feeling what he felt. Mothers did it all the time. They had that on television didn’t they? It was a real thing. Certainly. And Romano was allowed his tears because he was three, and small, and just a little boy. Romano was practically an infant, still. He was allowed.  
  
The lights flickered.  
  
Lovina turned on her heel, shaky, and retreated into her bedroom. From underneath her covers it didn’t matter if the lights disappeared and the sky fell. She made sure to purposefully flip the light switch before jamming a pillow over own her head. So maybe she had _chosen_ to lie alone in the dark and the terrifyingly strong, screaming wind. What of it?  
  
Upstairs, Antonio slipped his bookmark into place, stretched, and decided to go to bed. If it was raining out—wait; it was raining out? Since when?  
  
He turned out the lights in the foyer because when he forgot to he could hear his sisters chiding him in the back of his mind. In the darkness he tripped over the third step from the staircase landing, and he could hear the far-off snort of one of his first tenants, because apparently he couldn’t see well in the dark and forging your own way is only well and good when you remember to fix the bump in the carpet the first time. Or even the sixth time.  
  
With an impressive hopskipjump that _didn’t_ send him tumbling over the banister, Antonio made it past the landing and up up and up to his bedroom.  
  
It wasn’t that Antonio hated being alone. What he hated was being alone after not being alone. But those kinds of thoughts… they weren’t really his kind of thoughts. He blamed the rain on the roof, pattering away in bursts instead of in an indistinguishable, endless murmur.  
  
A gust of wind tickled his ear, and it was curious because he thought he had closed all his windows. He didn’t bother to check that he really had, because he knew ( _almost_ ) as well as anyone that his memory was questionable when it came to things like this, until after he’d thrown his shirt in a corner and his teeth felt like fresh, biting cinnamon. At that point, feeling the soft edges of his boxers and wondering whether it was cold enough for actual pajamas or whether he’d rather throw on another few blankets ( _people weren’t meant to sleep with clothes on; what a strange concept_ ), he found the gap.  
  
There was a small, slight, almost invisible gap between the pane of glass in one of his windows and the frame surrounding it, and the air it let spill into Antonio’s bedroom was wet and cold and angry.  
  
He fixed it with tape.  
  
Well, patched it with tape.  
  
He’d come back to it in the morning when he wasn’t so tired, when the blankets in the hall closet weren’t too far away. When he hadn’t flopped onto his bed, rolled the outer layer of blankets over his body and ignored the dig of wire ( _thin but strong_ ) into the side of his face. That’s when he would fix it for real ( _with glue. And maybe more tape_ ).  
  
As Antonio drifted off to wherever he went whenever he slept, the lightning dimmed, the thunder paused, the rain evened. As if to give him peace.  
  
Or, more likely, to lure Lovina further into her false sense of it. Ten o’clock and Romano still hadn’t cried. This was the longest he’d slept by himself during a storm. She had expected him to come running through her doorway ( _not that she would have seen that part, no, but she would have heard his hurried footsteps_ ) fifty minutes earlier. It was good that he was sleeping.  
  
Unless he was scared, so scared, that he couldn’t move at all. Not even to run, and. And maybe she needed to go check on him. Yes.  
  
Lovina needed to get up, turn on the flashlight by her bed and not the lights because if they didn’t come on then she would not be responsible for the noises she made ( _she was used to power outages at all hours, what the fuck was this, fucking sto- **she was not afraid of storms**_ ).  
  
The flashlight exposed the faded shadows of water and _things_ moving beyond the glass behind her small curtains, high up near the ceiling, and she was out of the room before the thunder returned. She was in the living room, by the time it returned, and fuck everything who put a table there?  
  
To her credit, she did not drop the light.  
  
To her slight shame, Romano, in his small bed, in his corner of Manly Independence Mama I Wanna Sweep Awone!, slumbered on. His breathing was even, mostly, but he’d always mumbled in his sleep. Little half-words and thoughts Lovina couldn’t understand, even though she could decipher Romano’s meanings better than anyone when he was awake. Antonio claimed he could translate Sleepy Roma perfectly into English or European Spanish, or even Italian if she let him borrow her dictionary and helped him with the stranger phrases. Sometimes Lovina thought that Antonio wasn’t always as stupid as he generally appeared ( _sometimes she even wondered if he was fl—flir—nevermind_ ).  
  
“Hush, Roma.”  
  
He didn’t, but she’d tried. Lovina returned to bed, and let go of the flashlight once she was certain that it wasn’t about to roll away from its home underneath her pillow.  
  
She tried to ignore the wetness in the air. She didn’t think about the wetness in the carpet.  
  
Six hours later, she wished she had.  
  
Romano Vargas woke, at four hours and thirteen minutes after midnight, with a sneeze.  
  
Lovina Vargas woke, at four hours, thirteen minutes and two seconds after midnight, with a scream. Vargases were very sympathetic screamers. Set one off, and they didn’t like their kin to shout alone. It was unconscious ( _so was Antonio, upstairs, but then of course the Fernandez family preferred to fight their battles alone, and the Carriedos still didn’t know when it had started raining. Seriously. When had that happened?_ ).  
  
When she thought about it later, Lovina knew that Romano’s bed wasn’t floating, because it hadn’t left its solid place on the solid, if sodden, ground. But with the damn dark, and the fucking _wind_ , “What the hell?!”  
  
Romano continued to cry, whine really, until he found Tomato floating nearby. He grabbed him, shuddered at the smell of dirt and too much water, and hiccupped until his mother came and told him everything was going to be better.  
  
It took Mama a lot longer than he would have liked to actually _do_ that, but she did, and her chest was dry, so he threw his arms around her and shivered.  
  
“I can’t tell—I—what’s—fucking, _don’t you dare repeat that Romano Vargas_ –”  
  
Before he could repeat that, because she’d told him not to, the entire room went white. The door rattled on its hinges, which door Lovina couldn’t tell because it was too bright, and barely any time later the entire house _shook_ and a couple hinges didn’t seem to matter so much anymore. “Shit!”  
  
“Ah!”  
  
Upstairs, Antonio snorted awake. “Wha-?” And rolled over, asleep.  
  
Downstairs, Lovina had had enough. She had had e-fucking-nough because she, in truth, was so terrified of storms that it had taken Feliciano _and_ her grandfather _combined_ three hours to coax her out of the space below her mother’s wardrobe when she had been ten and the roads had washed away. Lovina wasn’t ten anymore, but she was still scared, irrationally, and pissed off, rationally, because her home was standing in more than ten centimeters of water, it had to be more like twenty, or fifty, and it was rising and Tomato was wet against her back and she wanted it to **stop**.  
  
At four hours and sixteen minutes after midnight, Antonio woke up again. “Buh?” This time, he stayed awake. “Just let me—hmm?”  
  
Lovina didn’t wait for him to open the door to his bedroom, she knew it wasn’t locked, so when she fell against his chest, …damp?, and… calling his name?, he wondered if maybe he hadn’t stayed awake this time.  
  
Romano punched him in the stomach and yes, he was wide awake.  
  
“It’s flooding!”  
  
“It’s what?”  
  
“What the fuck did you think I said?”  
  
Antonio got it out before she could, beat her by only a breath. “Don’t repeat that, Roma.”  
  
“No!”  
  
Punch.  
  
“Ah— flooding?”  
  
“ _Yes_!”  
  
“Here?”  
  
She didn’t deign to respond because it was a stupid question, and because the house shook again, only this time it was a branch, maybe falling onto the roof, and she bit her tongue accidentally out of shock.  
  
“Why’s it so dark here?” Antonio lifted his hand toward the switch, and Lovina would have told him to stop it because if the lights were out she was going to kill him, and, “oh, I guess the power’s out. Let me get a flaaaaaahhhhhhhhh—!”  
  
Lovina only headbutted him because her arms were busy with Romano. And, under the circumstances, it was a lighter sentence than he deserved. He hadn’t even fallen over. “Don’t. Just…. Fix it.”  
  
Antonio went to fetch the tape.  
  
Lovina didn’t have to say anything, because that wobbly look in her eyes when she saw how he intended to fix… whatever it was ( _flooding? Rain?_ ), made him sigh, and maybe blush, and maybe put some pants on because the tools were all in the garage and the garage was always a little too cold.  
  
It was… wetter. In the garage. Most definitely wetter than usual.  
  
“Oh shit.”  
  
From behind him, Antonio could hear a whispered, “not that either.”  
  
“Lovina?” She stared back. “I thought you’d stayed upstairs?”  
  
“No.” There was no light upstairs. Antonio had taken her flashlight with him, and like fuck was she going to stay up there and _wait_. “Romano was scared.”  
  
Antonio motioned.  
  
He motioned again.  
  
He motioned again, wider, as though making sure that if she hadn’t seen him the first two times, she would definitely see him the third. Or the fourth. Or the— Romano jumped into Antonio’s arms, most likely to get him to stop.  
  
“Roma?”  
  
“Woma.”  
  
“Romano, you don’t need to be scared.” Antonio began walking towards the door until he remembered that tools, he had come here for tools. “Boss is going to fix everything and then we can sleep extra long tomorrow because we’ll have deserved it and even Mama will stay because she looks like she’s not feeling very well.” He shifted Romano into one of his arms, and waited until the arms grasping around his neck stopped grasping _quite_ so much. “Lovina?”  
  
“It’s okay for him to be scared.”  
  
“…huh?”  
  
“I’m fine. And of course Romano’s scared; why wouldn’t he be scared?” Lovina jumped out of the garage as soon as the beam from Antonio’s light reached into the house. “It’s perfectly reasonable that he’s terrified right now, out of his mind, a-and I’m fine!”  
  
“…huh?”  
  
She would have stomped away, or despaired of his intelligence until he wandered off, except he had the light and the wind was louder while the garage door was open, and then he was heading towards the basement. Her basement. _Fucking basement_. “Fix it. Just- _just make it stop_.”  
  
If it were only the leak at the door, which Antonio didn’t find because it was dark and he was too preoccupied with the steady stream flowing out from under the bathroom sink, he wouldn’t have been able to do much. Tools or no tools. Tape or no tape. But, “the pipes—it must be from all the extra water from the storm.” He sniffed. “You’re really lucky it’s just water.”  
  
Maybe in the daylight she would remember that comment and do… something, something to make him pay for making her think about it. But without even a nightlight all she could muster fizzled as she took in her surroundings. Her home. His home, technically, but _her_ home more importantly. It didn’t feel like it.  
  
“And you’re even more lucky that Romano’s still in the Tries to Put Everything He Can Reach into His Mouth stage.” Antonio waved, wrench in hand and delinquent piping mollified in quiet, _dry_ shame before him. She saw that, yes, most of their belongings were safely stowed on shelves a meter above the ground. That wasn’t the point. Before she could tell him so, he told her so. “This is still,” he paused, “I’m sorry.”  
  
He looked like he meant it. He had better.  
  
She bit her lip.  
  
“You don’t have to stay here for now, or, or anything like that. And I’ll loan you anything you need that got damaged; I promise this has never happened before! Not even when Francis clogged all the drains down here with flower petals, whatever that was for, and I’ll fix everything and in the mean time I can open a few of my sisters’ rooms for you, on the second floor, or the third, and you know you don’t even have to come back down here if you don’t want to. You can stay, up there, it’s nicer I promise and it definitely won’t get all wet like this and it’s probably safer and there are more bathrooms and it makes more sense anyway because Romano’s going to need a room of his own soon and you’ll be closer to the kitchen, well, not really, but you’ll like my oldest little sister’s room, she had the floors redone in there before she left and the bathroom she shared with my second oldest little sister could probably fit the both of us, it’s really big, and…”  


* * *

  
  
The door swung open ominously. Lovina would have coughed at the dust, but there wasn’t any. She coughed anyway. She’d known Antonio’s home was old, and big; hell, she’d been in this hallway before.  
  
But she’d never been in the rooms past Antonio’s. The doors had always been shut and she’d never had a reason to pry, other than the off-handed thrill of prying, and there had never been an appropriate moment. It didn’t look like she had missed much; everything in Antonio’s oldest younger sister’s room was covered in white sheets, wonderful, she had moved from one horror movie to another.  
  
Romano was already nestled under dry, if musty, blankets next door. Antonio’s second oldest younger sister’s room didn’t suit him at all; the stool at the vanity was too tall for him, and the light pink walls drew a contrast, not sharp but still recognizable, with the enormous orange shirt he’d borrowed from his Boss to sleep in. But Romano didn’t want to be far away. Lovina didn’t want Romano far away either. Not now.  
  
“Get some sleep, Lovina.” Antonio threw a wad of white dust covers into a pile on the floor. “We’ll figure something out in the morning.”  
  
He left, soon after, just four doors down if she needed him, why would I, just in case, well I won’t, is it still raining, why would you even say that? He shuffled as he walked, clearly exhausted, and she hoped he passed out and only remembered in the morning that the Vargases were now living upstairs and their rent was _not_ increasing if she had anything to say about it ( _rent? When did that happen?_ ).  
  
Lovina curled into the unfamiliar bed, in a stranger’s room, and didn’t bother turning off the flashlight. She would wait for that until dawn, if dawn ever arrived. She fell asleep listening to the rain.  


* * *

  
  
“Roma?”  
  
“…m-m-ma…!”  
  
“What is it this ti—”  
  
“No!”  
  
“Ah- that was my _leg_ , Romano. What’s gotten into you?”  
  
**BOOM**  
  
Oh.  
  
That.  
  
The general consensus, shaking in the corner of Antonio’s oldest younger sister’s room, was that Antonio had made it better last time so he could make it better this time too. The general consensus only just barely beat out the special interest group, ‘we don’t need him even if he does sleep naked,’ and the fringe group, ‘stupid Boss make it stop being so scary, even Mama’s scared this is impossible, she isn’t scared of anything.’  
  
“Unnnh.”  
  
“…Antonio?”  
  
“…mmmm.”  
  
She tried again, this time from just within the door. “Antonio?”  
  
He didn’t move. Romano took that as a the go-ahead to jump onto the bed next to him. Romano was always of the mind, even when traumatized by nature, that the middle of the bed was his property. As were most of the blankets. Antonio didn’t startle, though; instead he seemed to slip from sleep into a light haze of partial wakefulness, partial dream. He rubbed at his eyes. “Did the tape not work?”  
  
Lovina ignored that, holding her robe closer to her body because she wasn’t going to do this only in a nightgown, horror movie night be damned. “The rooms are… too dusty. Romano couldn’t sleep. And he won’t let me sleep when he can’t.”  
  
Antonio grimaced. He knew exactly what she meant.  
  
And maybe it was the sleep controlling him, or maybe it was the small part of him that was very alert, but before he rolled over ( _with fewer of the blankets this time because hogging them wasn’t polite; no one ever liked it when he did that_ ), he patted the side of the bed next to him. The part not already taken up by a little boy sleep talking about bedtime stories and naranjas.  
  
He felt the bed depress tentatively and sighed before letting his mind drift back into dreams. On the other side of Romano, Lovina lay awake for some time, thinking about the softness of the blanket and the warmth of the room, and the whirling wind she could no longer feel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliché? Believe me, I knew that going in.
> 
> Also: I missed three months in a row = so much fail. And where did all this angst and introspection and headcanon come from, self? The last section feels tacked on; but I had to tack it on because it was the original goal of this chapter. Seriously. I just wanted the Romanos to get rained out, huddle in a dusty room before telling Antonio to budge up and move over. And then Romano was supposed to wake up after that and have a Man-to-Man chat with Antonio, but I think I can feasibly shift that to another scene. This one’s already longer than it should be.
> 
> Tries to Put Everything He Can Reach into His Mouth stage: the day minimano learns for good that most things actually aren’t food is the second worst day of his life.
> 
> Double Also: My ‘t’ key keeps sticking and it makes me sad.
> 
> even if he does sleep naked: and yet this time he definitely went the boxers route, so how does she know that? Well. Well. I’d like to hear your answers, frankly. B\
> 
> bedtime stories and naranjas: the latter word being Spanish for ‘oranges’ and Antonio wasn’t kidding about being able to translate Romano’s trilingual sleep-mutterings. Those other times, though, Lovina? Yeah. That was flirting.
> 
> Next time: The Day Romano Finally Learned the Word Fuck  
> because I could not not have this chapter


	10. The Day Romano Finally Learned the Word Fuck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘The Day Romano Finally Learned the Word Fuck’ is what it says on this chapter’s tin. _Exactly what it says on the tin._

When I was little my teacher sat us all down in a circle, took out the talking stick and the class fish Hugo, and told us that there were some words that we should never say. I always had a difficult time concentrating in the Serenity Meadow, but even now I remember what he said that day.  
  
“Everybody has feelings,” he told us, “even Hugo the Spirit Fish. Now, everyone, lay down for meditation time and if you call Mary a ****** again, Jack, I will beat the ever living **** out of you with a ******ing *****.”  
  
The next day my father transferred me to a nearby academy for gifted students. They didn’t have a Serenity Meadow there, or a Spirit Fish, but they did have an excellent school newspaper and a headmistress who liked to threaten to wash our mouths out with Ajax brand dish soap ( _my editor said I had to mention them at least twice (_ Ajax! _), even though I have no memory of the headmistress being so specific or so cruel_ ), which kills 99.9% of germs and should be used responsibly.  
  
When I went home and asked why Jack, who had also transferred, smelled like lemons so often, my mother sat me down in our kitchen and made sure to tell the cook that it was all right if dinner was delayed by half an hour or so.  
  
“Toño,” she said, “sometimes when children say filthy, horrible things, their parents respond with filthy, horrible punishments.”  
  
“But doesn’t soap taste gross?” I asked.  
  
“Very much so,” she said, “but that is the point of it.”  
  
“You wouldn’t make _me_ eat soap, would you?” I asked.  
  
“Never, Toño. Never.”   
  
My mother got a strange look in her eye, then, that I only really understood the day I tripped over the ottoman in my living room and sprained my ankle after I saw Roma take his first steps and wanted to take a video of it ( _now I always keep a camera in my pocket. Did you know phones have those now?!_ ): when you really love someone you know that no matter how many times you decrease the germs in his mouth to .1% of their original amount, he’ll still keep calling the girls in class ********s because secretly all he wants is a hug and his mother to come back from the dead.  
  
In other words, if one good turn deserves another, then, conversely, corporal punishment really isn’t worth it.  
  
Before she left, my mother told me she knew I’d raise my family right.  
  
I told her girls were weird. I was thirteen.  
  
I still think girls are weird, because sometimes they wear your apron and make you dinner, and other times they call you an enormous moron and storm out of the room, and sometimes those are even the same time. But it’s a good kind of weird.  
  
Like children!  
  
No matter what Romano says, even if it’s the filthiest, most horrible slang that I only know is filthy and horrible from context, I’ll never make his throat smell like germ-free lemons. Becajklfssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss  
  
---  
  
* * *

  
  
“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh _arks_.”  
  
Antonio tried to stop his keyboard from tumbling off the table, but it clattered to the floor before Romano could even stop tugging on Antonio’s arm. If the ‘s’ key didn’t unstick that would be three keyboards Antonio had lost to Romano-related incidents. And it had been such a good keyboard, too.  
  
“Boss.”  
  
Good thing Antonio had saved his draft two paragraphs before Romano had decided that he had something he needed to say. The column deadline was coming up soon, and in between finishing another chapter of his manuscript and Romano starting school the next morning, and Antonio borrowing a few news cameras to document Romano starting school the next morning, and Lovina standing at the door looking at him in a weird way, and—  
  
“ **Boss!** ” Romano jumped into Antonio’s lap. By reflex, Antonio crossed his legs while Romano was still midair. “…no.”  
  
“No?”  
  
“No!”  
  
And Antonio understood. Maybe. “Romano,” he grabbed Romano in an enormous one-armed hug that let him use his other hand to push his computer further away from the edge of his desk. “Romano, are you scared about school tomorrow? You shouldn’t be!”  
  
Romano shook his head.  
  
“The Academy won’t let you take Tomato with you,” Antonio thought fast, “but I’ll make a special hiding place in your backpack so you can take him anyway please don’t cry? For Boss?”  
  
Romano stopped shaking his head because he hadn’t been worried about that, actually, he’d only wanted Boss to make him something to eat, but _now_ he was terrified because they were going to take Tomato away from him? What sort of monsters at this scary monster place were Mama and Boss sending him to? Why did he have to go? Why?! “ **No!** ”  
  
There was only one obvious solution: Romano had to take Tomato and run away from home. They could live in the park until it got dark and scary outside, and then they could live in a hotel like they did that time when Boss said ‘They got me two rooms by mistake! R-really! Come on, Lovi, doesn’t Roma look like he wants to go on vacation? Pleeeeeaaase? It’llbereallyboringtherewithoutyouandI’llmissyoutoomuch.’ And then Mama would come and pick Romano up and bring him home, because Romano didn’t like sleeping in strange, scary places, including hotels. Because they were scary. Almost as scary as the park at night.  
  
Before Romano could enact his clever plan, however, first he had to make sure Boss knew it was all _Boss’s_ fault.  
  
Lovina wasn’t fast enough to stop Romano from headbutting Antonio the first time, but she was able to pry her son away before he could hit the computer monitor with his flailing arms. Perhaps in the past she would have been embarrassed on Romano’s behalf. Perhaps in the past she would have blushed, and apologized profusely to her landlord. But it had been five fucking long years of dealing with Antonio and his perfect-faced, dumb, stupid, stupid _self_ -ness, and Lovina was done apologizing to a man who brought it all on himself.  
  
“Shh, Roma.”  
  
She rather preferred life in the present.  
  
“Kindergarten will be wonderful. Don’t listen to your stupid Boss.”  
  
…Oh fuck, she was doing it again. Somehow Antonio had trained all of them to call him by that stupid nickname. Even his own editor.  
  
“It’s time for Romano’s snack, Antonio, and you _promised_ you would ffffu—,” shit, “fix him something. You promised to fix him something from an old family recipe and he’s been looking forward to it. So. Do it.”  
  
Lovina Vargas had a problem. She had grown up in a rather large, rather loud family that spoke its mind as a matter of course. Her first word had made her _grandfather_ blush.  
  
But Lovina was determined to be better than her parents; she was going to raise Romano to be a little saint, whatever anyone said about her capabilities be damned. It wasn’t like she _had_ to curse. She could stop herself. She had been stopping herself for five years already, and as far as she knew Romano had developed the vocabulary of an angel that only spoke four or five words, and none of those words were profane.  
  
“Huh?”  
  
Antonio Fernandez Carriedo also had a problem. He had grown up with a large family as well, but they tended to only swear like angry, drunken sailors after stubbing a toe or when the power went out and it was cold outside. No, Antonio’s problem was slightly different than Lovina’s. Otherwise, if she was also having emotional difficulties that arose from falling in love with her single-parent tenant, then Antonio would have to review the terms of her lease and evict the asshole. While finding a suitable foster home for the asshole’s adorable child. “You know you can’t sublet, right?”  
  
Lovina blinked. “What?”  
  
The mental filter Antonio had developed sometime during high school was coming in extremely handy right now. “I’ll make you something to eat, then, Roma, right away, ah ha ha, nothing Lovina!”  
  
Still sniffling, Romano went running for the kitchen because even if his sadness hadn’t completely worn away, and even though he still had to go to school the next day, _food_. Antonio winked at Lovina as he followed at a more sedate pace. Once when he had winked at her she had even winked _back_ , potentially, although Antonio had passed out immediately afterward so maybe that had been a nice illusion created by the combination of his intoxicated mind and the very sharp gravel that made up his front walk. He thought he remembered, after Lovina winking at him, a giant tomato taking over the city of Madrid. Something about that just felt off. Lovina wasn't the kind of woman who winked.  
  
“Tomorrow’s the big day.”  
  
It was. Lovina had taken the day off so she could take Romano to school _and_ pick him up and ask him about his day as they walked home together. Missing firsts in Romano’s life wasn’t exactly new to Lovina, but she hated when it happened. Watching Antonio’s videos were never the same. This time she would be there for Romano. “He’ll be fine.”  
  
She said it mostly to reassure herself, had been saying it all week. It was almost working.  
  
“Of course he will.” And on the off chance that Romano wasn’t, Antonio had cleared his entire day and had the Academy’s address pre-programmed into his car’s GPS. He had a bottle of juice and a bag of cherry tomatoes waiting in a cooler in his car. He knew every ice cream shop within a ten mile radius of the school. He was prepared. “He’s a Vargas. And he’s practically an honorary Fernandez too, haa, he could call himself Romano Fernandez Vargas and doesn’t that sound really good, it’s a strong name, and I-I’ll just see what Romano’s getting up to in the kitchen, okay!”  
  
Real men knew when a strategic retreat was the most valuable move. Antonio hoped he’d taught Romano that much.  
  
He hoped he’d taught Romano that big boys could make it to the toilet.  
  
And that they could also take naps without putting up a fuss.  
  
And that they could also use their words, in full sentences, and not their sharp little fists ( _Antonio could always hope_ ).  
  
On the other hand, he hoped the Spanish curses hadn’t stuck. Spanish was just close enough to Italian, while remaining distinctly identifiable, that Lovina would kill him if she heard Romano say any of the things Antonio had maybe… shouted… once… or twice…uh. Men weren’t allowed to be near power tools for longer than an hour without uttering at least two expletives. It was a rule.  
  
It was also a rule that father figures show off their power tool prowess to their charges, and that landlords fix up any maintenance issues on their properties. So, Antonio had given his stone a pair of safety glasses and made two birdhouses with it.  
  
Romano had liked the birdhouses.  
  
…or was that saying supposed to go a different way?  
  
After spending half the night thinking about it, Antonio was pretty sure that that was how the saying went. Maybe. At six he decided enough was enough, and rolled out of bed. It was an important day.  
  
It was Romano’s first day of school.  
  
Pulling a shirt on, Antonio tiptoed down the hall, past Romano’s room and then bolted for the stairs. A first day of school deserved a first day of school breakfast, and Antonio only had an _hour_ , and how was he supposed to be done before Romano woke up?  
  
Why did his house smell like coffee already?  
  
“Lovina?” She jumped when Antonio called her name, before settling back down at the kitchen table on her folded, robed arms. Antonio hoped she’d slept. And by that he meant in her own bed. A first day of school was exciting, but nothing to lose sleep over. Well. Nothing to lose an _entire_ night’s sleep over. “How long have you been up?”  
  
She waved vaguely at him with one arm and then waved vaguely at the mug of coffee in front of her.  
  
“Lovi…”  
  
“Romano is going to be fine.” Her hair was wet. There was a much higher chance that she had slept properly if she’d showered already. There was also a high chance that she wasn’t wearing anything under the robe if she’d showered already.  
  
Antonio took a peek towards Lovina’s feet while he sat down next to her. Soft, striped pants covered her legs below the edge of her robe.  
  
Damn.  
  
“He will be. Hey,” maybe she would let him rub her back if she had multiple layers of clothing on, “you want to help me make him breakfast? Or lunch? I can do breakfast while you pack up his lunch.”  
  
“Yeah. …Fuck it.” Lovina angled her head away from her arms. Antonio was staring at her in the way he always did whenever he was about to unabashedly enter her personal space. It had been a long enough night that Lovina could almost mentally justify putting her hand on his arm and placing a light kiss on his cheek. He was an idiot and he was going to make both breakfast _and_ Romano’s lunch if Lovina had to be the one to drag Roma out of bed. But he was her idiot. Sort of. “Yeah.”  
  
“F-f-fuck?!”  
  
They sprang apart.  
  
In the entryway to the kitchen, Romano and Tomato stared at Mama ( _who looked like she’d taken a bath in tomato sauce_ ) and Boss ( _who had fallen onto the ground again, stupid Boss_ ) in horror. They had been. Mama had been. Boss. They had. _They had started breakfast without him_. “ **Fuck!** ”  
  
Of all the days. Of all the times Romano could have chosen to inherit this part of his birthright… “Romano Vargas **do not repeat that word**!”  
  
“Fuck no! No!”  
  
“I am warning you!”  
  
“Fuck!”  
  
“How did you even— you will sit down, young man, and you will _never say that word again_ do you hear me?!”  
  
From the floor, Antonio touched his hand to his cheek and hoped he still had time for the three-course breakfast he had planned. He also thanked whichever Saint that had been watching over him for letting Romano pick up one of _Lovina’s_ favorites. While he was at it he requested for whichever Saint that was the least busy at the moment to send a note down to Romano’s guardian angel so it could somehow stop Romano from cursing before eight-thirty, when his Kindergarten started. Teachers never liked that kind of thing. “Listen to your mother.”  
  
“Fuck boss!”  
  
Lovina’s eyes, were they to grow any larger, would have popped out of her head. “Apologize to Antonio!”  
  
Romano hid behind Tomato because Mama was being scary and why was everyone shouting Mama’s favorite word anyway? “Fuck!” …he’d thought Mama liked this one. She’d just said it! And she was always telling him to talk more, and, and, and Boss always said that too, and “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”  
  
At some point, Antonio thought, you had to stop gaping and had to start laughing.  
  
He had reached that point. “Lovina?”  
  
( _“Fuck!”_ )  
  
Lovina had not. She whirled with gale force and Antonio had to remind himself that most of the time she wasn’t this terrifying and also that he was taller than her and reasonably stronger. “ _What?_ ”  
  
“It might be on his mind, but,” he shielded his face with his arms and hoped the promise of making breakfast _and_ lunch _and_ dinner _and_ dessert would be enough to ensure his safety, “I’m not ready to give him The Talk yet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN:While I was writing the cheer-up charm, I started wondering what kind of disciplinary parent Spain would be. He’s an exasperated shouting / water off the duck’s back type empire in the strips, but that’s not quite the same thing.
> 
> Also: of course Romano would only start parroting curses the day they release him off to school, of course.
> 
> Also HI! I hope returning readers are doing well, and that any newbies are doing loads better now that they’ve read some more spamano.
> 
> Triple Also: I made myself a tumblr a couple weeks ago. Currently I’m using it to like the shit out of pictures of trees. And some other stuff. Pictures of Grandmano, for example. Follow me if you like! Or, if you’d rather, give me suggestions of awesome blogs to follow. I don’t really know my way around yet (I’m the new transfer student from LJ High and you, player character, have the chance to show me around Tumblr Academy).


End file.
